September 11 Posted by Joe

For sure, its been once heck of a week….starting with the call for the transplant….then the waiting, waiting, waiting to confirm the match….then more waiting for the surgery to begin…..and then more waiting, waiting, waiting for the surgery to be completed.

 

Vikki has had her new lungs for 4 days now.  And it upsets me to say she is not making much progress toward recovery.  Its going to be a long, tough struggle….more than we ever expected.  I have been at the hospital daily…12 hours a day….there is a constant stream of doctors and others in and out of the room from more specialties than I can count.

 

Things aren’t bad….but they’re not what I would call good.  The new lungs came with an infection, and that has to be treated.  Vikki developed her own infection, which also has to be treated.  Her blood pressure is unusually high, and that has to be treated.   She has some kind of heart irregularity, and that has to be managed.  And then there’s the normal stuff for a transplant….pain management and anti-rejection drugs.  I have lost count of the number of tubes she has….some to get medicines into her body, and others to drain icky stuff out.  She had two broncoscopies this week to clear out her new lungs.  She has been to interventional radiology a couple of times ….  for IV insertion, for pain catheters and for a feeding tube.

 

She can’t breathe on her own yet.  This scares me, but the doctors are not alarmed.  They have tried several tests where they turn down the respirator and see if she can breathe independently.  Simply put – she flunked the tests.  Today she was able to go for 30 minutes, which was an improvement.  She was getting tired, struggling to breathe and running her blood pressure way way up….so they stopped the test.  She has to pass this test a couple of times before they will take breathing tube out.  The longer it takes, the more I worry.  But the doctors aren’t worried yet and I keep telling myself they know a lot more about this than I do.  When they start to worry, then I will REALLY worry.

 

I have to keep reminding myself she was really sick before the surgery.  The surgeon almost changed his mind about doing the surgery, but he thought the lungs were too good of a match and didn’t want to miss this opportunity to save her.

 

At this point, all we can do is wait….let the medical folks do their thing….and pray that each day will be better than the last.

Thanks to everyone for your support and kind words.