Year Of The Transplant - Part 2

The old heart.  Notice the thickness of the walls.

I returned to work after the "trial run" but just felt tired all the time. The beginning of the year is extremely busy for school counselors and what time I spent at school was filled with various issues. I found myself not having much patience with kids and parents who thought that their current issue was life changing and earth shattering. I found myself resenting being left out of decisions at work although I understood why they had to make plans without me. I took off one day at noon because things were just not going well. I thought I'd treat myself to lunch at my favorite Chinese place (and yes, this was not on the list of foods my docs told me to eat!) and had started out when it began to snow. Just as I was exiting from the Creek turnpike and stopping to wait on traffic....you guessed it, I got rear-ended. No damage was done to my car...how I don't know...but the poor lady who hit me had one banged up grill. I went on to eat, came out to 4" of snow, drove slowly home and crawled under a blanket and crashed. That was my Charlie Brown day...when everything I did seemed like "Good Grief!"

One thing I learned during this time period is that you don't promise something to somebody who is ill and looking forward to it, then back out. It is really disappointing when you are having issues and are looking forward to doing something fun then having the people who you were planning for fun with have to back out. I made myself a promise then and there that I will try my best to never do that to someone.  People have their own lives to lead, but a person who may be facing the end of life hangs on to everything, and when plans change it creates a great disappointment for them.  Just something to keep in mind if the you are even in that situation.
February brought on a lot of sadness at school. Our school librarian's daughter was murdered in a domestic dispute. Such a beautiful young lady. When I visited with her mother she said she could deal with it if I could have had her daughter's heart. Reality hit me in the face with that. I never thought about this heart coming from someone I might have a connection to. Not sure how I would have handled that. While working on an iMovie for the service, my friend Melenda's husband asked me to sign his donor card for him. He'd been in a minor wreck the week before and he realized that if something bad would have happened he was not a donor, and although he felt that Melenda would donate his organs he wanted to make it official. In fact, several faculty members signed up to be donor's over my circumstance.

The day after the funeral, my cousin died. She had battled cancer for a long time. The biggest issue that developed from that is when the word went out on prayer chains around my parent's house it was assumed that it was I that had died. My Uncle Jim heard it at his local hangout and came to my parents' door in tears because he thought I'd died and nobody had told him. My parents thought it was funny but I made them call the church and straighten them out! I also had to go back and do 5 more vials of blood because this antigen level was a little higher than normal. Lovely. So, in I went to battle the needle for a blood draw.

February 22nd saw me arriving at school very tired. There had been a lot going on and I was getting weaker. As I arrived that morning I counted down the days till Spring Break and wondered if I could make it at school until then. If so, I would just take the rest of the year off. As I was contemplating all this the phone rang...and it was the transplant clinic. A heart had become available in OKC that they felt was a perfect match, but they wanted me to come in for another blood draw so they could make sure the antigen would work.

Now, my perfect plan of getting to the hospital went out the window. My principal was out of the state at the time, one assistant principal was at a meeting for him and the other was in charge of a building of nearly 800 kids. Both counselors were tied up with preparing for the state writing test the next day. Melenda was one of the possibilities for District Teacher of the Year and had to attend a couple of ceremonies for that. Lisa was teaching and nobody was available to cover her. Amy was in the meeting with the principals. My sister in law was on her way to Arkansas. And for the folks to come take me meant at least another hour. So, I took a chance that Robert would be available...and he was. I left school and he met me at my place. We gathered things up and he contacted my parents. We arrived as they were running the normal Tuesday heart clinic. Now, I should explain that they do not like to let everyone know that a transplant may be ready to occur because, although people are very kind and interested, they don't want 30 transplant survivors hanging around the hospital while you are waiting.

Eventually, they took me up to CICU and got me a room, had me change, hooked me up to the various tubes and needles, and we waited. And we waited. And we waited. We waited so long that Alton got back from his trip, Melenda made her evening TOY presentation and came to the hospital, and family came from as far as Joplin. Finally about midnight they said that this was the heart but that they had to wait for other transplant teams to arrive as the family of the donor decided to donate everything they could. But that was the longest night of my life. A severe thunderstorm came up so they couldn't LifeFlight to OKC as they planned. Instead, they had to take an ambulance to OKC, wait on the other teams to finish, then head back.  Remember, this is Oklahoma where the weather can change in five minutes from beautiful to similar to the North Pole and rain can go to sleet or snow in a heartbeat.  I began to fear that we would not be able to get to OKC to procure the heart and, once again, I would be disappointed.  I wasn't sure I would be handle another disappointment.  But I didn't have to go through that.

Finally, about 7:30 they came to get me. As we were wheeling our way down to surgery the CICU nurse and the doc's scrub nurse got into a heated argument about where my family and friends were to wait. Now, I'm laying on the gurney after waiting all night long for this to happen trying to yell out, "Who cares? They'll be fine! Get me to surgery!" but my mouth would not move. I don't remember getting to the operating room at all or anything that happened from that point on.

Apparently, they found a place for my family and friends because about 90 minutes later they called them into a separate room and told them that the procedure went great and that I was in outstanding condition. I have heard there were lots of tears and screams of "Yes!" going on.

I woke up in a foggy dream to see that I was back in my room at CICU. I knew at that point that it had gone through because I was back in the room where I started. I don't remember seeing anybody at all on Wednesday but my family was allowed to come back and my dad reported tht my blue eyes were back to the bright blue they used to be.

On Friday most of the tubes and some of the needles had been removed. Note: If you ever have drain tubes in your chest be sure and have the nurse wait to pull them out until the pain medication has taken affect! My family could come back to see me but they had to wash up and put on masks so I wouldn't catch anything from them. By Saturday, they had me sitting up in a chair and eating about whatever I wanted. (This would be allowed only to get my strength up, then the diet would go into affect!) Sunday morning, Melenda came back with my parents and sat in the room with me for about an hour as I sat up in a chair. But that afternoon, I slept most of the day. I tried my best to watch the OSU-KU basketball game that is supposed to be one of the best ever played, but I just couldn't do it. I did wake up in the last minute when the score was only 1 point different and managed not to have a heart attack as I watched the finish! That evening, the nurse got me up and I walked around the CICU for a little bit just to get my feet under me. Was the best feeling I'd had in a long time.

The next morning they moved me to their Cardiac Speciality Care Unit where I had a private room. Again, only a limited amount of people were allowed to come back to see me but I had access to a phone and got several calls from people wishing me well. I had wonderful nurses who took care of me. Brad helped me get up and walk around the floor for the first time. He wanted to do a lap and then see how much more I could do. We talked as we took a slow stroll around and he asked if I could do one more...I replied that I could. When we finished that one I asked if I could do another. Brad said I'd done enough. What he didn't understand was that I had not been able to walk and talk at the same time for over 2 years!

Dr. Whiteneck came to visit in ICU as well.  He had to speak at a TU basketball game about organ donation and wondered if I had any ideas to give him.  I just said to emphasize that organ donation gave you a second chance at life, and wouldn't that be the ultimate gift to give someone.  I later heard that he did speak at the game and mentioned that a counselor from BA had just had a heart transplant.  There were several BA education people in the audience who said they were very impressed with the kind Doc!

I went home on the 10th day after my transplant....one of the fastest they had ever had. I would have gone home earlier but my potassium level spiked and they wouldn't let me go until that was under control. Understand, it took less recovery time for a heart transplant then it normally does for open heart surgery. Truly amazing.

I had to come back to the hospital the next day for blood work...something I would continue to deal with for a long time. Cami, who would become my personal phebotomist as we years went by, could not find a place on an arm to get blood. Eventually, she had to go in between my knuckles to get enough to do the tests. While we were there I heard LifeFlight land but didn't think much of it. Then, as we left, I thought I saw my principal's van drive into the hospital and made the remark to my folks that I sure hoped somebody told him I was home now.

But, it wasn't me he was coming to see. One of our students, one who ran errands for me when I needed something done that I needed a truly responsible teen to do, had an anyurism at school. Over the weekend, his parents elected to donate his organs because he had made a remark about how cool it was that someone was able to save my life. Allen O'Brien was a very special young man who went on to help many people even in death.

This truly was the circle of life...from a stranger, to me, to Allen, to more strangers. God, in His infinite wisdom, took something so sad and tragic and made something wonderful. What an amazing God we have!