Rough Day in Rehab

The hardest part about being in a pulmonary rehab class is that eventually, we are going to lose friends. Often, someone will not show up for class for months then we hear that they died. Everyone from all my previous classes are gone, I am the last one standing and it feels rather weird.

Before class today, the RN came out to the lobby and gently broke it to us that Rob died over the weekend. We had been so worried about him that we sent a card from all of us filled with our wishes for a good health so he could return to our class. He was a great guy, had a fantastic wife and was very proud of his two adult son but his health was failing. He made his final trip to their vacation house in the mountains of Lake Tahoe but the elevation was very difficult for him and he was clear that it was his last trip there.

Rob qualified for lung transplants several years ago, his number was called, he was on the table ready to have his lungs removed when my Dr. K. , of all people, noticed a lump in one lung. She immediately suspected cancer, they closed him up and no transplants happened. He was furious. It was only a tiny bit of cancer. He went through surgery to remove the lump and had all the processes to make sure it was gone. As he bumped into being too old for transplants, he recently met with the transplant clinic doctors who broke it to him that he needed to be five years free of cancer inorder to qualify for lung transplants. By that time, he would be too old. He was not going to be able to qualify for transplants.

What made tears come to all of our eyes was that his wife was sobbing while telling the RN that her husband had died but wanted to relay a request from him. He had instructed her to call the rehab class after he died and to tell us that he loved each and every one of us.

Still teary.

He was a good man. May he rest in peace.