How it has been going since transplant.

 

I am two years, five months out of my heart transplant. My life is far different than it was before. At first I found things to do, driving to have lunch with friends, going to pick up my sweet grandson from child care once a week for a "date". Going to the gym to see my trainer, working hard. Realizing that getting back in shape would be more of a stretch than it was getting there in the first place! 

This was pure bliss. Then there was COVID. I could go outside, but couldn't drive anywhere that ended up inside, like the Safeway, Sherwood Hall Library, or to my daughter's house. The only place I went was to the transplant center, and that was a big outing! During that time, I fainted several times, once outside my house. Standing on the driveway, I thought I was at a delightful garden party, until I hit the pavement. A woman was walking past our house. I could see her alarm, then hesitation about coming over to help. She had on a mask, and I didn't. Even when a neighbor falls, we must protect ourselves first. So she hailed my husband to come help. 

Another time I fell into my breakfast dishes, worrying my husband. I could hear the train roar and felt the shaking that accompanied each episode. I made a spectacular face plant in the toast!

Inova screened me up one side and down the other. A CT scan of my head gave no information. A sinus CT also showed nothing. Then the ENT put me through a whole barrage of diagnostic procedures. They proved nothing. A neurologist did a forty-eight hour EEG. Nada. 

My veteran transplant coordinator suggested that, possibly, the pain killer I was on for an arthritic hip was the culprit. I needed pain management, but as a transplant patient, I could not take an NSAID. They interfere with an immune suppressant. I went off the opiate derivative.  I haven't fainted since, and I can't wait to get a hip replacement

Now I have a leaking tricuspid valve. Actually it has been leaking for at least a year. A year ago, it was severe. Now it is ""torrential". Reminds me of a tsunami. So I will either get an experimental transcatheter valve replacement, or I will receive surgery, maybe breaking my sternum again. Nothing is settled, yet. I'm not happy about any alternative, but if I choose nothing, and take medication, I will die of heart failure. That isn't an option for me.

The dear one who died and had the wisdom to be an organ donor needs to be honored. I have her gift, and I want to keep it in working order. That's how we feel about our donors. They were heroes, and we must carry them into the future. It is only fitting. I also like living. As my Dad would have said, "It ain't so bad".

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Star Wars Started our New Chapter of Life

Image
When Star Wars debuted in Cleveland (Star Wars: A New Hope), My husband and I were in the midst of moving from our delightfully cozy world to a new one. He had been offered a job in Washington, D.C. This was a difficult move for me, as my family was in Cleveland, and I had never lived anywhere else. We had a two bedroom apartment in an old but tony suburb. It was large and spacious, with wood floors and a fireplace. The ceilings were at least ten feet high, and the place was within walking distance to Shaker Square, home of the Shaker Rapid Transit. The Rapid still had its 1930's cars with windows that opened.  It went straight down to the Terminal Tower, now known as Tower City in the heart of downtown Cleveland. We had many friends from the Cleveland Institute of Music, and from Trinity Cathedral where we were paid soloists. Our situation was as perfect as possible. My husband received an offer he couldn't refuse, so we prepared to move. The night before we drove to D.C.,...
Read more

Mom, part 1000.

She started crying two weeks ago and couldn't stop. So she wouldn't go down to meals at Sunrise because she'd cry, and "people would be annoyed". "How can you tell they are annoyed, Mom?" "Because they ignore me." "Maybe they are ignoring you because they don't know what else to do?" "No. They are annoyed. I'll stay in my room." She stopped eating, and called my sister over and over. She cried, sobbed and gulped like an abandoned child. She wouldn't watch TV because, "I used to watch TV with Gordon." She wouldn't read because, "I read when I was with Gordon". Gordon, her husband of 28 years, died in March. She went to Sunrise directly from a stay in a nursing facility where she lived while Gordon died slowly, with much struggle, and a conviction that he'd make it, and take care of her again. He promised her. She believed him whole-heartedly. She misses him dreadfully. But she won't...
Read more

Prejudice...My Mom's Secret War

Image
Mom as a child. My Mother had a secret war. She didn't take it to the streets, or join with others to wage it. In her heart she held beliefs that were mightily opposed to the popular opinion of her time. She taught me that African Americans were not N****s, as the neighbors said. They were "colored people, or Negroes". They were people like us. But she taught these things quietly, as if fearing someone would overhear. The most powerful, long-lasting oppression she held within her was the oppression of Anti-Semitism . She falsified her applications for work after she quit high school because they asked for her religion. She wrote, "Protestant", instead.  In one of her first jobs she was routinely called the "Jew Girl" . This she wanted to avoid in the future. When I was small, she counseled me to never tell anyone I was half Jewish. We lived in a second-generation Roman Catholic neighborhood in Willowick, Ohio. I told, anyway. I thought, if ...
Read more