Helllooo! So I want to blog my transplant experience. For those of you who don't know, I received a double lung transplant on July 31st into August 1 (I went into surgery the night of July 31 and came out the morning of August 1). But there was sooo much more that happened than my actual transplant, and I thought some people might be interested in reading about it.. and even if no one is, I want to write it anyway to be able to look back and remember every wave of this storm that Jesus brought me through. The waves, however, didn't seem to end and because this perfect storm is going to be my longest blog ever (and that's saying something!), I'm going to break it into parts and write about a part each day. I'm debating adding pictures -- nothing gruesome but I don't want to upset anyone. So if I do add pics, I'll put them at the very bottom with a warning :]
Ok.. Here we go.
Hospital trip round 1 I already blogged about -- it was when my lung was bleeding and I was in ICU and then came home yaya! Unfortunately about a week or 2 (sorry my times are probably going to be a little off) after being home, my oxygen went very low even with the supplemental oxygen on. I stood up one day, and my o2 level dropped to 72. We couldn't get my oxygen to stabilize at a good level, and I needed to go to the hospital. The problem was that I was now on 18 liters of o2, and the tanks we had wouldn't last long enough for us to get to NY. Our options were to be admitted to a local hospital, which is dangerous because local hospitals aren't well informed about CF, or go to the local hospital and be transported to NY. We wanted to just take an ambulance, but they can only bring you to the nearest hospital. Bah... What to do? Well, surprise surprise -- enter God. God blessed me with an amazinggg friend -- June :] she's an EMT and when we started getting serious about waiting for the call for lungs, she set up everything with her squad and got permission from the higher-ups to be able to use once of their "rigs" to transfer me to the hospital should we get the call. Well, we didn't get the call but we did call June! June and her squad came to the rescue haha I was brought to NY in an ambulance with my mom on my right side, and my best friend on my left. What a blessing to have June be doubling - and what I mean by that is I was holding the hand of my best friend and more than capable EMT at the same time. I can't tell you how that relieved so many fears. Thank you God for June, and thank you June <3
My dad followed the ambulance in the car with all our stuff, and something extra.. Johnny! (thanks Johnny <3) We hung out in the ER for awhile as we waited for an ICU room to open up, and then went to ICU. Tiny rooms, but I guess I wasn't exactly going to throw a dance party while I couldn't breathe anyway. I don't know how many days it was until one of the transplant surgeons came to see me. He and another doctor said I should go on Bi-pap - not a huugeee deal .. but still alarming enough. He also mentioned something called ECMO - and that it was a possibility if the Bi-pap didn't turn things around, but let's try bi-pap first and see what happens.
My nurse Sarah -- who was awesome by the way, showed me pictures of the ECMO machine and explained it a little just so we knew the basics of what it was, but again said -- don't worry over this because we don't even know if you'll need this -- but God knew.. and just like himself, he was sweet.. there were a few times that God spoke to my heart during this trial, and this was the first one. "Brace yourself, because you're going to need this."
I was blessed while being prepared for battle because God is love.
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