Lung Transplant Clinic Visit #1 - Introduction

Photo of a lung with fibrosis from an interstitial lung disease (ILD)

We visited the lung transplant clinic Thursday morning. The good news is that even though there is an increase of fibrosis in my lungs, I am stable. My numbers are horrible but they have always been horrible.

They referred me back to my wonderful Dr. K. to monitor me until I need to take the next steps. They said that I am too stable and, if I don't crash which is an issue with my disease, it should be many years before I darken their doorway again. I am now in their system and that is good. They told Michael to get me to their hospital if anything out of the ordinary happens. 

We looked at each other and realized we were just given our lives back. We also learned that it is very common for transplants recipients to be 70-years old. 70! Jeez, I was happy just to make it to 60! So, we are back in the land of the living. We also learned more about the process and met with amazing people, which removed the fear and doubt about receiving new lungs. 

We felt like we dodged a bullet. We both took a deep breath and realized that indeed, we will probably grow old together. That is all we really wanted.

We learned a lot. In the next few blogs, I will pass along a lot of information about the process of a lung transplant that was presented to us at the clinic – before, during and after transplantation. Many thanks to them for this information.

Tomorrow, I will blog about the evaluation process.