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The phone rang Monday at 5:45am, rudely waking me up, so I decided to ignore it, as I often times did. Again…whoever it was called back so I decided to answer the phone. With the stumbling around in the dark I finally reached the phone but didn’t get there in time to answer it. I figured that if it was important they would leave me a message. Well, they didn’t leave a message and within seconds the pager I had been given started beeping in my bedroom. I immediately knew what that was! When I looked at the pager it was the hospital and I needed to call them. So I called the hospital and was given the news that they had a liver for me and I needed to get there ASAP. I was extremely excited, but you need to understand that I am the type of person that just takes things calmly in stride, I’ve also been called stoic. After I got off the phone I sat down and said a prayer, thanking God, and then slowly began to get ready. I didn’t rush around too much although one would think I would be freaking out! First I grabbed something to drink and then sent off a couple emails and made a few phone calls, for obvious reasons! I had prepared a variety of emails in advance of the transplant giving instruction to certain people once I had my transplant. I called friends and family and told them what was going on, but told them to sit tight because sometimes the transplant is not a go so I didn’t want to waste everyone’s time in going there for nothing…DUH! I did have one persistent friend Dave that called back 3 times and pretty much told me him and his wife, Ruth, were driving me to the hospital no matter how much I kicked and screamed about it. Later on I learned that this guys wife was in the background telling him he better call me back and tell him they’re driving me…no matter what. I think out of all the phone calls my brother was the most excited and pretty much freaked out on the phone when I told him.
So…off to London we go…
Once again I need to share some of how God was at work but in order to that I need to back up about 2 weeks. My best friend, John, had gone over to Holland with his family for a couple of weeks. His fiancé, Annie, and I dropped him off at the airport in Toronto. One of the last things that I had said to him was that it would be hilarious if I were to get the call for the transplant while he was gone. We both had a laugh figuring what were the odds?!?! Well the day he was returning, if you can believe it, was May 16th, the same day I got the call for the transplant. Oops…guess I won’t be able to pick him up after all. At the time I was also leading a Men’s Group Bible study and our last meeting was scheduled for that Monday night as well. Oh well, I won’t be able to get to that either! I realized all of these different things while I was on the way to London with my friends Dave & Ruth. I didn’t have a cell phone at the time and none of my family did either. Had Dave & Ruth not driven me to the hospital I would not have been able to call my friend Doug to let him know what was going on or that he needed to pick up my friend John and lead the Men’s Group that night. There were a number of other phone calls that I made that day, those were just the ones I remember! You can’t tell me that God wasn’t in control…
We arrived in London around 9:30am and were directed to the ICU. While we were waiting there, my brother showed up around 10:30 or so…apparently he told his boss what was going on and was promptly kicked out of work and told to come to London. That was a big and welcome surprise. So there was a small group of us hanging around in ICU and at approximately 11:30am the doctors told us that the transplant was a go. Aside from some testing throughout the day, it went pretty quick. There was this really funny oriental doctor though, actually he was a Fellow, which I have no idea what that is. Anyway, at one point during the day he came in to explain what was going to happen during the surgery. It was quite humorous because he had this pad of paper and drew what was apparently supposed to be a liver on the paper, which since I had eaten yet it actually looked like a dorito! He then proceeded to tell us in highly advanced medical terms what they were going to do. He said they were going to “take the old liver out and put the new one in”…literally, and then stopped. Well, it is really hard to convey the whole story here but at that point both my brother and I went all puffy cheeked in an effort not to break out in laughter. I was thinking to myself, “Ok…I’ve already figured that part out!” He then went on to explain the surgery in a wee bit more detail which is a good thing. He was actually a really great guy.