Here We Go Again

I hope I still know how to do this blog thing - I see that it has been awhile since I have done this. Well, we may as well just jump back into this and let’s rip the band aid off.
 
As many of you may know, or may have wondered about, life has changed a lot for me (and my wife, Carrie) over the past number of months. Since March, I have been dealing with some serious health challenges. This has included three hospital admissions throughout the spring, with the final diagnosis coming in mid-May, that I am in acute organ (lung) rejection.
 
What does this mean? It means that I am going to need another double-lung transplant. It is as simple and complicated as that (I told you I was going to rip the band aid off).
 
The journey to get to this serious diagnosis has been a trying one. It’s not as if my team of transplant doctors have never seen this before, but the way this has all gone down is not very common. In addition, the road leading to this diagnosis has had many diverging and criss-crossing pathways that at times made little to no sense.  
 
Like anything, in hindsight my doctors can see the through-lines of how the rejection developed. The speed in which it developed is still a bit mindboggling - and how it started a mystery.   There is chance that I have been walking around with a dormant version of it well before first getting sick in March, and it just took a roll of bad infections for the stars to align, causing the rejection to finally show its ugly face in the past number of weeks.
 
Now that we know what we are dealing with, it has been amazing to see the transplant doctors, nurses and specialists from all over come up with a plan, put that plan into action, and within two weeks be ready to activate me on the lung transplant waitlist once again.
 
And that is the bottom line, that for the second time in my life, in order to go on living, I will once again need a life-saving double lung transplant.
 
 
Now a lot of this has probably led to more questions than answers as it has for us as well. There are a lot of things still up in the air, a lot of things that only time will tell us, but here are some quick answers to some general common questions:

• I am home from hospital, and I am using some supplementary oxygen to get around.

 

• I am not on the transplant waitlist yet, but my pre-transplant workup is all done and I could be activated on the waitlist anytime if needed.

 

• In terms of when I could be waitlisted, the best measure of time is most likely weeks or a month, not months or years.

 

• Will I end up back in hospital anytime soon? We are fully prepared every single day for that reality.

 
I will leave it at that for today. I will try in future blog posts to fill in a bit more of what the last couple months have actually looked like in terms of getting sick, but for now I figured this would be the easiest and quickest way to update you on what’s been going on with me.
 
Your thoughts and prayers are most welcome and always appreciated. Carrie and I have felt incredibly supported and loved by our families and close friends who have walked the last couple weeks with us as we have been processing this next chapter in our lives. We have also felt the love and support from those in our wider community, who have known that I have been struggling these last few months, but have not yet had the full picture.
 
We appreciate your patience as Carrie and I continue to work through what the present looks like, and also how the future may look. For now, we are just taking it day by day, waiting to see how the road will rise up to meet us.
 
Peace to you.
George and Carrie.