14 Years

(note, though this is posted on June 20th, it was written on the evening on June 18th, the anniversary of my transplant)
 
Today felt like the whole spectrum of time––past, present, future––came to roost in one day. It was a day to honour and reflect on the past, a day demanding itself be to intensely present, and it was a day asking to try and discern the future.  It has been stretching.
 
The Past:
It was 14 years ago today, June 18th, that I received my double lung transplant. If my lungs were a person who just so happened to be born on the day of my transplant, they would be graduating middle school this week (congratulations Hailey!). 14 years is a long time, and when I am able to reflect on these past 14 years––blocking out the cloud that now hangs over life––I am so incredibly proud of my lungs. They have allowed me to accomplish things that I never thought possible. Physical feats like biking from the coast all the way to Alberta (twice!). They breathed me through attaining a master’s degree and becoming an ordained pastor. They gave me the calm and ability to care for Kim, my late wife, in her journey with cancer. They provided me the strength to return to our family business, to work alongside my dad, mom and cousin and become the strongest I have ever been in my life, feeling the healthiest I ever have. And over the past year they have oxygenated me to once again find the most amazing joy and hope in being able to fall in love and marry my wife, Carrie.
 
My donor of course will never know what they have done for me, how their lungs have kept functioning and living, have kept giving. My donor has now been gone for 14 years - something that Carrie and I also reflected on––praying for their family and the grief they may still be experiencing. But as always, I do hope I have been able to make my donor proud in the life I have lived these past 14 years. I am incredibly proud of my lungs and the strength and resiliency they have shown. But above all, I am so thankful––thankful to my lungs; thankful to my donor. 14 years isn’t a lifetime, but a lot of life can be lived in that time, and I have tried to make the most of mine.
 
 
The Present:
The second demand of the day has been the present day and the present health situation I find myself in. As proud as I am of my lungs, I also can’t take more than a couple steps without being reminded that my partnership with these lungs is coming to an end. These lungs inside my body are not what they were just a couple months ago, and I have only my own body to blame for that. The immune system is one of the most wonderful things in life, a true gift of God keeping us healthy despite all the crazy micro-things that we come across every single day which could easily kill us without it. Unfortunately for me, it is this most amazingly innate thing of an immune system that is now trying to kill me, by trying to kill my donor lungs. Ironic isn’t it.
 
And so, as I reflect on the past, I am also pulled into the present. I had transplant clinic today of all days, so there was a lot of focusing on the current state of my health. I had bloodwork which for the most part is fine. I had an x-ray which the doctor said looked good, but can’t draw any conclusions other than that it is not worse than the previous one (something to be thankful for). And I did my pulmonary function test which was very confusing because there is no way anyone would consider being transplanted with the fair numbers that I blew, but like everything, it is a lot more nuanced and complicated when you actually talk about oxygen exchange in your lungs (the thing that actually keeps you living) as opposed to the airway efficiency and capacity.
 
Usually today, my transplantiversary, is spent reflecting on the past, remembering my donor, but today my time has had to be split. There has also been the demand to focus on today, the information gathered, trying to explain to my nurse and doctor how the last three weeks have been at home, how much I am exercising, how much oxygen I am using, how much I am eating and the wildly out of control blood sugars I’m experiencing due to my dietary uptick and shifting Prednisone levels. Plus, like every day, which is a focused primary on the present, trying to measure if and how today is different from yesterday and last week and two weeks ago. Carrie is much better than I in seeing this, so I mainly defer to her to spot and point out the differences, which I am thankful to say are all still positive.
 
The Future:
The third demand of the day was trying to discern the future. This goes hand in hand with my clinic visit. Thinking about the future - meaning the necessity (barring a miracle, which I do believe in) of needing a double lung transplant - isn’t something I actually think a lot about. Usually I am too busy with just focusing on the present. But when your transplant doctor leans over the side of the table in front of you, looks you in the eye and asks if YOU think it’s time to be waitlisted, if YOU want to be waitlisted now, it really catapults you forward into a very unknown time.
 
Now of course my doctor was not forcing the question on me, he was wanting to see my reaction, wanting to know if I had strong feelings one way or the other––if I could feel it in my body what I was needing. He wanted to know if I felt I was still getting healthier, if I felt my body needed more time to heal and get stronger, or if I felt this was already taking too long and I needed new lungs ASAP. He trusted me and wanted to know my opinion. Before tipping his medical hand, he wanted to see my intuitive hand. In the end we both agreed that we would wait for now in terms of being waitlisted. We would give the unknown future some more time to unfold. He assured me I could be waitlisted at any time if things begin to slip, but I am still making marginal improvements each day, and he wants to see me get strong before undergoing such an invasive surgery.
 
So yeah, a lot going on today. A lot of thinking, remembering, discerning. A lot of compartmentalizing––past, present, future––but also seeing how all three of these time frames are connected in the uninterrupted spectrum of time, that my donor lungs of the last 14 years have brought me into another beautiful day to be thankful for, and that they might still have a little more left in them to give.
 
These lungs that I have been given have been absolute work horses. Time and time again they have risen to the occasion no matter what I have asked of them, often outperforming my wildest imagination. So today we decided to try give them a couple more weeks. Through graphs and numbers and pictures, through intuition and experience, we are able to see that even though their days are most likely numbered, they are still working harder and better than anyone thought they would. That even in their waning breathes, they are still giving me the gift of life, trying to set me up as well as possible for whatever is to come next.