Heart and Soul: there ll be days like this. . .

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 6

So, I think there is a song that goes, “Mama always told me there’d be days like this”. Well not my mama, but…. It is a day like that. Really bad chest pain which was what woke me up. Often does. It’s Wednesday, a telecommute day for my husband, which means I get to sleep in and he gets our son off to school. I plod downstairs, still in pj’s to get the paper. He says, “don’t know if you should read this or not. If it will make you feel better or worse”. And this is before coffee? And there on the front page of the Oregonian is the headline, “Captive to a Wounded Heart” and a diagram of a ventricular assist device and an image of a defibrillator. There is an accompanying story of a brave young girl, another heart failure patient heading for transplant complete with comments and quotes by my physicians. Remember my texture comment, IT’S getting all too real.

Then it gets worse. Still in my pj’s (I actually love pajama day, days when I kick back, feel no obligations looming, accept my fate –kind of and hang out). The phone rings. It’s the cardiopulmonary lab at OHSU calling to reschedule my appointment. THE appointment, one of the definitive test appointments to being placed on the transplant list. And not only are they rescheduling it, they are rescheduling it for a month, A MONTH, later. It was actually 5 weeks to be exact. Ouch, that was unacceptable to me as a patient, as a nurse, as an administrator, with so much riding on it. I have the presence of mind to share all of this with the poor scheduler and ask to be put on the cancellation list.  Thank God it’s a pajama day and I have no obligations because I crumble. I don’t usually loose it but I did. I know my husband wished he was in his office downtown, and not downstairs. It was not pretty. I think I yelled a lot……

*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.