Mike's Liver Transplant (Round 2)

Hey y'all - this is your friendly neighborhood Tinker (a.k.a "Pearls"), Mike Prilliman. After many raucous years enjoying the mud, blood, and beer rugby lifestyle with my Highlander teammates, followed by a number of years making questionable adult decisions regarding alcohol consumption, my liver decided to commit mutiny on Feb 1st of last year. As a result, I am now finding myself on the transplant list at Vanderbilt and should be getting the procedure done sometime this summer.

We are blessed to have some good insurance to cover the medical expenses, but the recovery time will require us to temporarily relocate to Nashville for 4-6 weeks in order to stay close to the doc's for follow-up visits. This will not be cheap, so that is why I am here soliciting your help to offset some of these expenses.

Any little bit will help and be graciously appreciated.

Thanks,

Mike & Loretta Prilliman

Update - 4/18/2025

Hey Fiends,

Sorry it's been so long since my last update, but it's turned out to be an interesting winter to be sure. I ended up having to undergo a second liver transplant on Feb. 6th due to a virus the first donor organ carried with it that I had no natural antivirals to fight. It's one of those weird situations where either you are born infected and develop natural immunities or are born a carrier with no such need. I was born a carrier. The virus caused an infection in the internal liver bile ducts for which there is no treatment. Basically, my first transplant organ committed suicide and had to be replaced before it went septic and killed me (that would be a bad thing). Due to a fortunate set of circumstances, I got the call for transplant 2 less than a week after I got put on the redo list.

Everything went pretty smooth, but I was back in the hospital or near the medical team in Nashville for another 6 weeks while I recovered from surgery. This essentially doubled our out-of-pocket expenses but thank God for good insurance because their share is now well over $2 million (dang). The recovery is progressing well, and we are now back home on the farm and enjoying the spring weather.

Anyway, even though I hate to do so, I am feeling obliged to reopen this site for additional donations to help us get caught back up on the expenses. I am forever grateful to those of you who donated so generously for round 1, but if any of you feel like throwing a few bucks our way it would be gratefully accepted and applied to help us recover from round 2. Please spread the word to anyone else you might think would give a crap.

Have a happy Easter!

Humbly yours,

Pearls