Scott’s Healing Journey — Part 9: Stability

When Stability Became the Signal

Scott’s Healing Journey Pt. 9 documents this phase of Scott’s Healing Journey, where Scott’s labs stabilized and trends began to matter more than individual numbers.

By this point, things were steady. And for us, that mattered. We weren’t waiting for the other shoe to drop anymore.

There were no big moments during this stretch. No dramatic appointments. No single test that changed everything. Instead, what stood out was how uneventful it all became — in the best possible way.

Labs stayed consistent.
Symptoms didn’t escalate.
Energy came back.

At first, it was subtle. Scott had a little more stamina. His days didn’t feel as fragile. We weren’t adjusting plans around how he felt hour by hour. We didn’t even notice the shift right away — until we realized it had been weeks since we’d felt that constant knot in our stomachs.

Earlier in the journey, every lab felt heavy. We’d open results with our guard up, already preparing ourselves. One number could change the tone of an entire week. We learned quickly not to get too attached to any single result — but that didn’t stop the anxiety.

By this stage, our focus changed.

We stopped reacting to individual numbers and started watching patterns. Trends mattered more than fluctuations. Direction mattered more than perfection.

And the direction was good.

Month after month, Scott’s labs told the same story: his body was holding. With liver disease, that’s not nothing. That’s meaningful.

We stayed careful. We stayed engaged. This phase wasn’t supported by medications — it was supported by targeted vitamin supplements, food, and close monitoring. When Scott was later told he had excellent liver function by the transplant specialist, he was also told he no longer needed to continue the diuretic he’d been on earlier in the process.

Nothing about this phase felt casual or complacent. We were paying attention. We were protecting what was working. And we never lost sight of how far his body had come.

But it also didn’t feel urgent anymore.

Life started to settle into a rhythm that didn’t revolve around constant crisis management. Meals became easier. Sleep improved. Days felt more predictable. We could make plans without immediately thinking about contingencies.

That shift alone was huge.

We also started enjoying life again — really enjoying it. We put music on during dinner. We lit candles. We set the table nicely instead of just getting food on plates. Little things we’d stopped doing without even realizing it slowly came back.

Those small rituals mattered. They became part of what we now call The Joy List — the everyday moments that bring life back into focus when you’ve been through something heavy.

They reminded us we weren’t just managing illness anymore — we were living again. And they helped us stop taking the ordinary moments for granted.

This phase brought a quieter kind of gratitude. Not the intense, emotional gratitude of survival — but the steady kind that comes from having normal days again. From uneventful labs. From routines that didn’t feel temporary.

We didn’t rush to call it recovery. We knew better than that. Healing isn’t linear, and we respected the process too much to put labels on it too soon.

But we could feel it.

Something had changed.

The ground under us felt more solid. The direction was no longer downward. And once that happens — once stability shows up and sticks — everything starts to feel possible again.

This part of Scott’s healing journey wasn’t about a win.

It was about realizing we weren’t losing ground anymore.

And that made all the difference.

Next: Part 10 :Navigating the Medical System in Crisis →

✨If you’re new here, you might also enjoy 💖 Our Story, The Joy List 🌟— Our Ultimate All Day Playlist — the Recipes we lean on when food becomes part of healing — and 🐶 Fur Baby Tales, where we share life through Jack’s eyes.

For readers unfamiliar with how liver severity is commonly assessed, the MELD score (Model for End-Stage Liver Disease) is one of the standard tools used by transplant teams to evaluate liver function over time. You can learn more about how it’s calculated here.