Saturday, and I Love All Of Your Messages

This is a dialysis machine that does the job of our little kidneys.

Day 12 post transplant...........

It is much better being here than in the ICU but Anna thinks that home will even be better. You think? Dr. Weill thinks she will go home around Wednesday. This has encouraged Anna. She so wants to be in a better environment. I do too but I still like the professional care and am not quite ready to take this all on. By the time she is home she should have no more IVs, the pic line will be out and hopefully her skin will not longer be weeping her extra fluids.

Anna had a difficult night last night and Casey stayed with her. He has been so wonderful and protective. She said the nurse was great it just is that the pred causes so much restlessness and agitation. It is a wonder drug that has saved Anna's life before but it does indeed have its drawbacks and that is mostly what she is feeling with these emotional mood swings and bad dreams. Dr. Weill has lowered her dose in the evening so we hope tonight will be more peaceful for her.

The drugs for transplant are hard. Not only that, it is all that you can imagine or not even imagine. To be graphic, your chest is opened, your life giving organs of breath cut out and then the DNA of another is place back in, sewed up and........... the mind must go crazy with all that unbelievable stimuli. Why did the body loose its lungs that have been working so hard to breathe and where in the ........... did these new ones come from? What the......????? Anna is feeling all of this as the body seeks to readjust to everything so different including her dear kidneys shutting down because of the shock to the system. The human body and its ability to heal is so remarkable. We are trusting the miracle of life to find its equilibrium. We also trust these wonderful doctors and nurses who do this everyday and Anna's great friends who have been here already and are thriving.........

Anna keeps me hopping from one need to the other so I have very little time to answer emails but I am reading them. I am grateful that you are so positive about being part of the journey even though it is a roller coaster and hard. Maybe from following some of Anna's story you can appreciate the magnitude of transplant.

It is important to understand that the recipients and the donors are all heroes and have given up the ultimate together to create miracles........... So hard, so full of danger and grief and so incredible. Thank you.........

Another part of our story............. As you know, Sara is working in the CF research lab here at Stanford and goes to the lung transplants to pick up the old lungs for research in the lab. She has been in the OR to do this task a number of times now but now after Anna's transplant she has gotten to know Dr. Steve, the fellow surgeon who has watched over Anna. A few nights ago there were two more lung transplants. Sara needed to retrieve the lungs from the first surgery and ended up hanging out in the OR with Dr. Steve and was invited to view the lung removal. This is a remarkable set of circumstances for Sara and the rest of our family. Imagine this....... others in the OR noticed her name on her badge and said, "We transplanted your sister? And you work with transplant? Amazing." It is another one of those interesting intricacies of all of this. As the mom, it blows my mind that Sara can witness all of this with such composure. She will make an incredible doctor one day.........