Fast Times At Lifeisnuts High
On March 1st around 1 o'clock in the afternoon I boarded an airplane and flew to Tampa to meet Susan for a week-long vacation. Everything started off great-- she picked me up at the airport, we went to the grocery store, then back to her grandparents' house for dinner, to an ice cream place for dessert, then back home to sleep. The next morning we rented a really nice car with tons of extras from a free upgrade and headed off to a flea market for an adventure in shopping. When we finished shopping (only finishing because the place closed!) we headed to the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida for an evening of entertainment and gambling. Oh, it was so much fun! All we did was play slots and walk around, but it was such a nice change of pace from being in NY and working and being stressed out.
Then at quarter to 11pm, everything changed.
My dad called my cell phone. "Where are you, Em?" he wanted to know. I told him I was at a casino and asked if everything was ok. He said that the unthinkable might possibly happen-- a transplant coordinator had called to say that a kidney transplant might occur the next day and he wanted to know how likely that was. I told him that they wouldn't have called if there wasn't a very good chance. We got off the phone with the agreement that they'd call me, even in the middle of the night, with the first bit of news.
Shaking, I got off the phone and told Susan what I'd just learned. When I felt fully confident that I wasn't going to relieve myself in my pants, we got up from the bench I'd planted my ass onto and walked around a bit more before heading back to her grandparents' home. When we got there we told her grandmother and grandfather that it was possible we'd be leaving early in the morning and not to be concerned, looked at airline tickets just to see availability, and then tried to calm down and relax, realizing what might come up in just a few short hours.
Well, a few short hours came... and then left me booking two flights home at 5am on March 3rd. When the plane landed in NY my mother was just going under the knife. I think the first incision was made around 12:30pm or 1pm or so and after dropping our stuff off at my house, Susan and I got to the hospital about 2pm, bringing along lunch for my dad and ourselves and some reading materials to help me get my mind off what was going on in the hospital a few meters from where I was waiting.
Six hours or so after it started the surgery was over with only the minor complication of a little cardiovascular shutdown-- they'd given my mother an IV antibiotic that she didn't know she was allergic to and had to use the paddles to shock her heart back into a recognizable rhythm. Sigh. Never dull with my family.
We visited her in the recovery room after they'd finished sewing her up and discovered that she'd have to remain intubated and on a ventilator for a couple of days in the ICU, which was hard to think about.
The next couple of days just kind of mixed together as my mom was still partially sedated and not breathing for herself... by the fourth day though she was off the ventilator and out of the ICU, up to the nursing unit where I work and under the care of my very own coworkers. Susan left for home at that point as she'd been with me for days and had no more clean clothes and nothing to wear in the winter weather (imagine that-- she'd only packed for Florida weather!), and the rest of the week just kind of melded into a blur of days with my mother gaining more strength while the healing process got underway.
Well, that all was over a month ago. She stayed in the hospital just under two weeks after the transplant, and has had to be rehospitalized twice since then-- once for a bloody nose that required a bunch of cauterizations and a transfusion of two units of red blood cells, and a second time a week later for a little bit of rejection which she got through by having several rounds of really strong anti-rejection medications along with plasma exchanges (literally giving her new blood plasma and draining her of the old plasma) to rid her body of any antibodies she'd developed that were causing the rejection.
And then aside from all the extra hospitalizations, my mom's had a million and one outpatient followup appointments for lab work and ultrasounds and nuclear scans and wound checkups... it's nuts how much time is required to get everything just so after a transplant.
Sigh.
So I'm exhausted (not to mention how my parents must feel). And I'm at my wits end-- I've used up all my patience for my mother so now anything she says ticks me off. Which is bad since we live together so we inevitable have to communicate... so I just try to leave the county a lot. I visit Matt as often as possible, and on my days off when I can't leave I've been trying to get to the gym a bit more and just spend time out of the house.
Hopefully things will settle down soon... I can't keep leaving and I don't want to go crazy for much longer. I'll be sure to keep all you Noodle fans posted though regardless.
Labels: Life
posted by Emily @ 10:52 PM
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