The yellow tint of his eyes was a dead giveaway.
Four years ago Kenny Wilson sat down for a meal, but his usually robust appetite wasn’t there.
“I told Candace (nee Lanquist, his wife) I didn’t feel good,” he recalled. “‘The flu?’ she asked. ‘I don’t think so,’ I answered.”
Their son, Henri, had the key observation. “‘Your eyes are yellow,’ he said. A little later I noticed I had jaundice (yellowing skin),” Wilson said.
Wilson had had few bouts with ailments. “It’d been 10 years since I’d seen a doctor; I didn’t even have a doctor.”
The next morning Wilson felt fine, although “I still looked horrible.”
After dropping Henri off at school — in Parkville, Mo., where the Wilsons had moved to find schools helpful with his Asperger’s — Wilson went to St. Luke’s North Hospital emergency room. Blood and other tests followed.
That afternoon the ER doc’s diagnosis hit like a ton of brick. “‘I’m sorry,’ he said,” which caught Wilson off balance. “‘You have complete liver failure,’ he said. ‘You’re not going to make it.’
“I was in shock.”
Rather than linger in a hospital bed, Wilson drove home — he still didn’t feel bad physically, although the blunt diagnosis did nothing for his mental state.
“Candace was in a panic,” he said.
They agreed it was a good idea to call Don Bodemann — he and the Wilsons were friends at Iola High School; today, Bodemann is a doctor in Hot Springs, Ark.
“Don told us to get another opinion and find out what was wrong,” Wilson said.
The second opinion was the same: “Liver failure. No hope.”
LIVER TRANSPLANTS aren’t uncommon. However, to qualify and to be put in line for a transplant, the patient’s condition must be such that the chances of success and recovery are predictable.
