Extra time

Since the last post we've lost 3 more transplant survivors.  One was after me, two were before.  As a transplant survivor you know that you are given extra time with no guarantees.  IF you survive the surgery.  IF you don't reject the heart.  IF you don't get complications from the medications.  IF some ordinary germ doesn't cause some major infection because you have no immune system.  Let's face it...there are a lot of IF's.

But, the extra time allows you to appreciate many things.  You appreciate your family and everything they do to help you pre and post transplant.  You appreciate your friends who stand by you from diagnosis to recovery and beyond, who listen to you, cry with you, believe in you.  You appreciate the simple act of taking a breath because you never know when it might be your last.  And you learn to live each day as if it was your last.  Not going overboard with doing the wrong things, but simply enjoying going to the movie with a friend or having lunch with your pals or spending the holidays with your family.

Next month will be 5 years of "extra time" for me.  Sometimes I get frustrated because I want to help others as much as they've helped me, yet my job has limitations that I sometimes can't change.  Sometimes I wish I could find another way of helping but the reality is that you do have to eat and pay for all these medications so you have to have a job and insurance!

The key to the whole thing is to take this extra time and do what you can, when you can , to whom you can, to the best of your ability.  If you can do that, then those extra days will be worth it.  Here's hoping I can take my own advice!

PS:  Friends and family.....go to the older posts and put some comments over things I've forgotten or stories that need to be shared.  You all know there were some funny ones!