Friday, March 26, 2010

Here is what I know

At 9:00am Wednesday March 17th, 2010, my work phone rang. There was a doctor on the other line. A few minutes later I was discovering he was one of the Pulmonary doctors at my transplant center, Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. He wanted to let me know that the surgeon, Dr. Camp wanted him to call me and stay by the phone because they had a pair of lungs they were looking at for me. He said he would call me back in an hour to an hour and a half. So over 3 hours passed...no call. I was told I could eat something light so ate an Ensure. At Noon, I got in touch with the clinic, she called Dr. Camp's cell phone and told me he still wanted me on standby.

At 1:15, the pulmonary doctor called back to say Dr. camp wanted me to head to the hospital. Though, they still did not know if it was a go. We got to the hospital around 4:00pm. After running here there and everywhere I was admitted and sent to the ER. Admitting said I was a go for 6:30pm and ER did not have that information so sat in the ER room. About 20 minutes passed and the ER nurse believed it was a go for 7ish. At this point no lines had been started. A calm just came over me. They went to town. At 7:30pm, I was rolled back to the OR waiting area. At 8:10pm, I remember hearing the surgeon say let's roll!

The next time I remember anything is Saturday March 20th around 2pm. I do know though that I have had a double lung transplant, another surgery for a bleed, I have been in ICU and now in a nice little corner room with a nice view. It has been quite a ride. I will need a lot of help the next few months recovering from this ordeal.

Thank you all that sent positive thoughts and prayers my way. They were definitely heard.

4 comments:

Jess said...

So glad you got your lungs! Don't feel guilty at all for that! We'll get ours soon and then we'll all be talking about how awesome they are!

Anonymous said...

Steph, congratulations on the new lungs. Glad to hear everything is going well(except for that darn lung bleed thing) and I hope you have a smooth recovery. Before you know it summer will be here and you'll be heading to your camp and the beach. Maybe I'll catch up with you when I visit my folks one time.

Kevin

CowTown said...

Stephanie! I was freaking out the day I heard...I was so excited for you.

You said you felt a calm come over you while you were in the waiting area. Is that how it went, you just felt ready, okay and at peace before getting wheeled in? Those are the moments I wonder about myself...ooooh the anxiety, no? Sounds like you handled everything brilliantly.

I love how you're out doing your laps, and laps, and laps, and laps right now. You rock. :)

Jesse Petersen said...

I finally found you! Ronnie mentioned you were getting lungs, but I didn't see any links to a CFSteph! ;-)

Thanks for the posts so far. Please, please feel welcome and totally invited to write a guest post on my site encouraging people to do the best with their natural lungs and put them at ease if they take a turn for the worse after trying as hard as they can.

Now, back to reading the rest of your experience...