Heart and Soul: bargaining. . .

Heart and Soul – One woman’s journey through a heart transplant

Welcome to the weekly blog of a Donate Life Northwest volunteer who has graciously offered to tell  the story of her journey through the organ transplant process. She will post to this blog every Wednesday so you can ride this bumpy road with her.

Post 5

While I walk, I am being passed by people both younger and older. I am thinking maybe they think I am just a really old pregnant woman and they feel sorry for me. For I do look pregnant, 4-5 months I think. But IT’S not a baby in my belly, its fluid, technically called ascites.

One of the first patients I cared for in nursing school (yes, I know way too much about all of this from many perspectives) was an older man, an end stage alcoholic with ascites. (Wow, now that I think about it he was probably in his 50’s, older huh?). But he was yellow, very yellow. At least I am ruddy. It will probably be these little tidbits, the little things like not being yellow that I will be most grateful for in the months to come. I am sick but not yellow. Who would of thought.

My therapist says that if I am able to see humor in all of this I am functioning at the highest level of coping. I always knew I liked her, I just didn’t know how much!

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross described 5 stages of death and dying. The first stage is denial. While I still won’t classify myself as dying, I read a statement by my physician on the front page of the Oregonian which described heart failure as  “slow suffocation”. (Maybe dying is a better term?)  Back to denial. I have been in denial for a very long time. I deny that my physician is talking to me, (to me?) about heart failure, transplantation. Kubler- Ross’s next stage is bargaining. While I am pretty good at denial, I am really good (I have been told) with bargaining. In Kubler –Ross’s world the bargaining is done with God. In my world on this day, the day my physician says, “well Susan”, I begin bargaining with him. What am I thinking? Here he is, the head of the Heart Failure/Heart Transplant program at OHSU who says he thinks the time has come to begin the listing process for me and I say, “can I bargain with you?”.

I am glad he didn’t laugh, just smile a bit. My conversation, my bargaining went something like this. OK, OK, I get IT. I feel IT. . .I know IT deep down, but could I just have the summer?  You see I have plans, big plans, annual plans. Plans that involve my son, my husband, my family, my friends and they are already made, already booked.

I can’t at this moment imagine not going to our summer home back east. It is where I will be able to get my arms around, my head around this whole thing. I really, really want and need to go. I need to sit on my dock and  take in the sustenance, the spirit my lake provides me.

So I say to this physician of mine, “you can have my body on August the 7th”. Once again, I was ever so grateful he didn’t laugh. He simply said, “lets get the tests scheduled and then we will talk”.  After a year, I think he’s getting to know me.

*disclaimer*
The author is a heart failure patient going through the transplant listing process. She also is a nurse and former hospital administrator. She would like to thank Donate Life Northwest for permitting her to post her observations on the Donate Life Northwest website. She also wants to emphasize that all opinions and views stated in the posts are her own and not those of Donate Life Northwest.

Tags: heart transplant, Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy, organ donation