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So what happened after surgery?
One may think that after having such a miracle take place in their life that there wouldn’t be much more that God could do afterwards, but that would be a mistake! Much of the first few days are foggy because of all the drugs I was on because of the transplant but I do remember bits and pieces. I remember that by 11:30 AM, less than 12 hours after the surgery, they had me standing in ICU. Now I didn’t like it but I understand why they did it. By 3 PM I was discharged from ICU and sent to the transplant ward. From my understanding most people were usually in ICU for a minimum of at least one day. They say that the recovery from a surgery is greatly based on the health of the person prior to the transplant but I also believe that God had a role in my quick recovery as well. When I was finally situated and comfortable in the transplant ward I remember one nurse telling me that the Physiotherapists would be in Wednesday morning to start physiotherapy. I made a comment to the effect of why couldn’t they just leave me alone for at least a couple of days…I felt like I had been through the meat grinder at that point! Later I learned that the nurses had lovingly given the Physiotherapists the nickname Physioterrorists! Wednesday morning I understood why…they were in my room at 10 AM sharp getting me out of bed and back again in the afternoon doing it again. But by Thursday I was walking around the ward and by Friday I was actually riding an exercise bike and using a treadmill. It took a couple of days to figure out how to get in and out of bed by myself but after the nurses dropped me in the bed when trying to help back I had an incentive to learn!
I am always amazed with how much I am blessed to have such awesome friends and family. During my stay in the hospital there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t have some sort of friends or family stop by to visit from what I recall. I actually remember there were days when the visitors just wouldn’t stop coming. They say having too many people visiting can actually slow the healing process, and at the end of the day I was usually pretty wiped, but I believe it was beneficial for me to have so many people around. One of the medications that I was taking was morphine, and if you have ever taken it there are really only a couple of things that occur. You either have hallucinations and weird dreams or you become paranoid and suspicious of everything. Fortunately I was the first type, although I did stay in a room with an older man that went bezerk about a month after the surgery when I ended up back in the hospital with acute rejection. Often times I would drift from being awake to sleeping and back and forth regularly within a short amount of time. It was odd…I could be sort of sleeping, visitors would be having a conversation and I could hear it them the whole time. Sometimes I would just wake up and join in…which kind of freaked some of them out! I would also find that when I tried to sleep I would think that I had been out for hours because of all the dreams I had, but then I would wake up and only 15 minutes or so had passed…that was a little frustrating. Then there was laughing…man you didn’t want to do that. In order to get at your liver they have to slice right through your ab muscles and guess what you use most when laughing…your abs! I remember talking with a couple of friends and we were laughing so hard and couldn’t stop I was in agony. The nurses always told me to hold a pillow against my stomach when coughing and laughing but it didn’t help much.
Not too long after the transplant I was talking to a couple nurses that were responsible for the drug study that I had signed up for on the day of the transplant. They were telling me about the day of the transplant when they came looking for me in ICU and weren’t sure who was actually the sick person. Apparently they expected me to be in bed and unconscious because they had never gone to ICU and found someone sitting up and functioning the way I was. I should briefly mention a little about the medication as well. When a person has a transplant they are required to take medication to prevent rejection of the organ for the rest of their life. Generally a person is on a variety of medications which can be quite costly. As I mentioned earlier I didn’t have a drug plan with work, but in Ontario there is a Provincial drug plan called Trillium. It is designed for people that do not have a drug plan and the way it works is that you pay a deductible based on your income. Every three months you are required to pay one quarter of that deductible or for all your medication until the deductible is reached. I mentioned earlier that I had signed up for a drug study the day of the transplant and the company that conducted the study agreed to pay for my deductible not only for myself but for anyone on the plan. This has been such a blessing and they continue to pay my deductible to this day. I am not sure how long it will continue but in the meantime am very grateful.