No guarantees
Stickers from the washing machine we bought
Six years ago today Randy had a lung transplant that saved his life. For no reason that anyone could figure out his lungs were developing “ground glass” scarring, hardening the lungs so that it was harder to take in and process the oxygen he needed to stay alive. First he couldn’t do much - like walk through the grocery store - without having to sit down and rest. Then he needed supplemental oxygen and was dragging a tank along behind him. Then two tanks. Then it was time to talk about a transplant.
Kaiser doesn’t do transplants, so after many, many medical tests we headed off to Stanford to learn about lung transplants. The first day we spent about 6 hours talking with a variety of people, collecting handouts and taking in a lot of information. We went home that night pretty much agreeing that, regardless of the risks and sacrifices, a transplant would be better than dead.
We returned to Stanford for a second day and Randy walked up and down the halls so the doctors could get a “score” for the transplant waiting list. When we were ready to go home, a group of doctors surrounded us and told us to walk over to the emergency room to be admitted. The consensus was that it was not safe for him to go home with just supplemental oxygen. They said they were going to hospitalize him until new lungs became available. We were stunned. But that could be months, I said. They just shrugged and led us to the ER. We heard a lot about scores and waiting lists and settled in to wait. And one week later (1 week!) at about 7am Randy called me and told me, They found some lungs. Again, I was stunned. We had barely had time to worry.
I drove to the hospital and at about 3:00 they wheeled Randy away to prepare him for the surgery BEFORE the lungs arrived. So I spent the rest of the day and on into the wee hours of the morning walking around the hospital, occasionally coming across other people waiting, lying on sofas with hospital blankets. Periodically I would check in with a nurse: The lungs have arrived. They’ve got one lung in. We’ll call you when the surgery is over. At around 3am I wandered back to the surgery waiting room to check in again and a white-coated doctor was walking toward me. He asked me if I was Mrs. Gaines and I said yes. (Whatever) He looked very pleased with himself and he told me that Randy was out of surgery and it went “fine”.
After about half an hour they let me go back to see him. I touched him to be sure he was alive and stood there and watched him breathe. I’m not a religious person (at all) but this was a secular miracle. It was amazing to think about how lucky we had been.
So today is bittersweet. The transplant gave us over 5 more years, but the drugs he had to take are likely what led to the cancer that killed him. We had hoped for 10 years (see photo above) because he was relatively young and healthy and he took excellent care of himself. The doctors told us that most people, if they make it 5 years they usually make it 10. But, they cautioned us, a transplant is trading one set of problems for another.
The first year was mostly recovering from the surgery, the second and third years he was mostly happy and healthy. Then Covid, then cancer. But he was always happy just to be alive.