For most people, the human organ associated with Valentine's Day is the heart. For our family--for now and ever more--the lungs will be what we think of.
Today marks the second anniversary of Shirley's transplant. I'm happy to report that the lungs are doing great. Her follow-up appointments with the transplant team in Seattle are now only once every six months. She has her blood tested every six weeks to ensure that the levels of tacrolimus remains high enough to be effective for anti-rejection; while low enough to limit the damage the drug can do to to her kidneys and liver.
The repercussions of being immunosupressed did land Shirley in the hospital last weekend. It was her first overnight hospital stay since 2013, which is frankly amazing after 182 hospital days that year. She was having some abdominal pain that was diagnosed as Epipnoic Appendigitis--basically an infection on the outside of her colon. The initial antibiotic they gave her made her sick and she was not able to keep it down. And the vomiting it caused threatened her anti-rejection drugs getting absorbed. The solution was three nights in the hospital while a different antibiotic was administered via IV.
Prior to this illness, early this year Shirley returned to swimming pool to help build her strength. It was swimming pre-transplant that was her main form of exercise and I'm certain that her time in the pool was what gave her the strength to survive her post transplant set-backs.
So two years down and a lifetime to go.
