Rafa & His Family Need Your Help After His Liver Transplant

Hello friends!

UPDATE As of 7/21/25

Alvaro needs a new liver. They don’t know what happened to this one but blood flow didn’t get to the liver from the heart and it took a major hit.

They can’t do a new liver transplant until they figure out what is going on with his heart and why it’s not able to get much blood flow.

Once they figure it out they can go from there and then get him back on top of the list again.

Update: Rafa’s liver is not working. He’s back in the ICU at UCLA. We’d be grateful for any spells, prayers, crossed fingers, well-wishes, etc.

Rafa cannot currently message or text (too sick).

We’ll also be re-launching the GoFundMe to get $$ for Ivy’s leeeengthy, not-covered-by-insurance hotel costs. (She’s at the Motel 6, if anyone’s got any connections!)

Thanks for your support, everyone. It goes a very long way for us.

I’ve been posting about my grandson Rafa’s liver transplant story. We’re SOOOO happy to say that he received his liver on Sunday and is recovering well! The whites of his eyes are white again!

But… it turns out we could really use your help.

Rafa will be in the hospital for another 6 weeks or so. After he is released, he will have to go to UCLA Health twice a week for another six months.

Rafa’s wife, my granddaughter Ivy, has been with him almost every day. David, their son, has been staying with us.

Every day at the hospital, parking is $16.

Every trip to LA (for Ivy to come see her son or for us to take him down) costs about $50.

Adding to these costs will be the co-pays for the MULTITUDE of drugs for the rest of his life.

And grandma’s credit cards are now maxed out.

If you could contribute to Rafa’s health fund, I would be BEYOND grateful. And if you can’t or don’t want to, that’s ok too — I’ve been so appreciative of your support!!!!

Thanks for thinking of us. I’ll keep updating Rafa’s status as we go along!