SINCE 2002 - 2021 A LIFE CHANGING DAY

At 12:06AM on Sunday, January 24 my cell phone rang. I kept it beside my bed incase something happened to my mom during the night. Michael popped up on his elbow, I grabbed the phone and looked at the caller ID: Alabama. 

"There are my lungs," I said to him. 

Yup. It was a woman telling me that she had a bilateral non-at risk set of lungs for me. She did one of the kindest thing that I didn't understand until later: She told me to take a shower before heading to the hospital. That was my only shower until two weeks ago. She asked us to text her when we left for the hospital and to text again when we arrived. 

We were out the door within the hour, heads spinning and with Covid rules in place, Michael was not able to be with me during the process. He headed back home to start making phone calls while I was put into a random room while waiting.

I later learned that anything that could be donated was given by the donor. It took time for all the different groups to collect the organs. The donor was very close to the hospital so the lungs were not outside a body for any length of time. Surgery began about eight-hours later and took six hours. We were so surprised to be receiving TWO lungs as people over 65-years old usually only receive one, as it is an easier surgery for recovery. We also felt we hit the jackpot as there was one FANTASTIC surgeon who I was so hoping to get. She did my surgery. 

Gratitude is the word that keeps coming into the conversation. Tears of gratitude. The surgery was rough, I'm not going to lie. I was intubated when they woke me up, went through two long days of hallucinations due to medications so it wasn't for a few days before I remember the morning X-ray tech coming into my ICU room for the morning X-ray. 

I hated having CT Scans and X-rays as they always said, "Take a deep breath and hold it!" Well, I could never do either! But that morning, I took the deep breath and I could have inhaled forever before holding it until the X-ray was done. It was the first time I realized that the new lungs were real. 

Later, during my first spirometry test, the tech printed out the the last test with my old lungs in red and overlapped the current test with my new lungs in blue. What a difference. I am actually going to frame it as a reminder of the gift of life.

After two weeks in the hospital, we were moved into a hotel about 25-minutes away from the hospital for a total of 6-weeks. We have one more week before we can head home. William came down from Seattle to stay at our house, take care of my mom and to cook for us. They have become best friends. 

I must say that the transplant clinic at this hospital is a well oiled machine. Every morning, I take my blood sugar, weigh myself, take my blood pressure and temperature. Two days a week, we are at the hospital at 7AM for labs before breakfast and medications. Usually two other days of the week, we are at the hospital for tests or appointments with the clinic doctors. There is very little downtime. We look forward to Sundays as William joins us for dinner as it really is our only day off from the hospital stuff, the twice a week appointments with the visiting nurse, Occupational Therapist and Physical Therapist. 

Yesterday, we went to the church where Michael and I met playing the Folk Mass fifty-years ago this Summer. I wanted to write in a Remembrance Book near the alter to the donor and the family. From the first realization of the new lungs, I felt they were very young lungs - late teen's or early 20s. I just knew. We had to meet the surgeon last week to fix a small problem with the incision (one arm pit to the other, under the breasts) when she asked how it felt to have new lungs. I told her about knowing they were very young lungs and she confirmed it. 

So much gratitude.