Hello, I'm in serious need of some answers.
My 57 year old father was diagnosed with Cirrhosis of the Liver almost four months ago and has been getting treatment for it. They put him on several kinds of medications to try and handle the disease. His feet are always swollen, and his stomach is swollen so much that he looks 9 months pregnant. He has been drained twice but the fluid keeps coming back. His MELD is currently 18 but it came down from 22 just from changing his diet and medicine alone. So he's been going through all of these different tests to try and get him put onto a transplant list and one of the tests was a stress test to check his heart because of his swollen legs.
He went into the hospital for these tests expecting to come home a few hours later only to be told they were admitting him because they found something wrong with his heart. Later that evening they went in through both his groin and his wrist to do a heart cauterization but couldn't get through. Later they told us that his LAD was 100% blocked and that his heart had actually made it's own bypass for blood flow, but that passage was now 90% blocked.
Apparently it's called The Widowmaker. He had no signs of chest pain or anything like that. Didn't even know anything was wrong. Several doctors have even told him that he has "A strong heart" (their exact words).
Anyways, the liver doctor and heart doctor are going back and forth with each other over what to do. The heart doctor wants to go in and give him a bypass surgery while the liver doctor wants to wait six weeks to see if his liver gets better enough for the surgery, saying that if the bypass surgery works that his liver could start to fail him. But he can't get a new liver unless his heart is fixed.
One of the doctors said that there was a 25% chance of the liver failing after three months and a 75% of it not failing.
Basically, I'm asking what we should do. Should we wait the six weeks and risk him having a massive heart attack and dying or should we go ahead and have the surgery and risk his liver failing?
We've also asked four different doctor for pictures or video of his heart but they've yet to show it to us. My mother wants to also know if we should get a second opinion.
If something goes wrong with his liver, can I give him half of mine to sustain him until it can get better or something? If we're a match of course.