This is not going to be a typical post, but it's a big enough event that it's worth writing about.
Let me start off by saying what a week it has been!
As I mentioned in my last post, I am still living at my parents' house. So Tuesday morning I woke up and heard my mom talking out in the hallway. My first thought was that it was really early and I needed to go back to sleep (because she's usually up getting ready for work around 6:30 am). Then I realized that it was light in my room, so my next thought was that it was the weekend (I was still really groggy). Nooo... it was definitely Tuesday. So I look at my phone, and it's 8:30 am, so I go out into the hall to see what's up. Mom and dad are both up and it looks like they're getting ready to go out... now I'm really confused. I asked mom why she was home and she said that about 4:30 that morning they got a call from The Cleveland Clinic that they had a donor and my dad was getting his transplant! For those that don't know, he's had type 1 diabetes for 40 years, and about 3 years ago went into kidney failure, so he's been on the donor list for the past 2 years waiting for a kidney and pancreas.
So they tell me that surgery is tentatively scheduled for 4:00 pm, and they head up there around 9. Me, Hubby, and my brother all hang out at the house for a while--no point in us hanging out in the hospital while they do all the pre-op stuff--and then head up to Cleveland around 1, which got us to the hospital around 3, and gave us about an hour and a half to hang out with dad before they wheeled him off the the O.R.
Surgery was going to take around 6 hours, so we (me, Matt, my brother, my mom, and the pastor of our church) headed to the surgical waiting room to spend the rest of the evening. When you check in, they give you a pager that will send you updates about your family member that's in surgery, so around 6:10 we got a message that surgery had JUST started. So we thought they would be done around 10:30, but now we're realizing it's going to be after midnight. Oh, and then he was going to be in the PACU for another 6 hours after surgery...
Around 8 pm, Hubby decided to go home because he had to work a 12 hour shift the next day, so he couldn't stay until dad was out of surgery anyway, so he figured it would be best for him to head home and get some rest. This left my brother and I to spend the night at the hospital with my mom.
The surgery went on, and around 9 pm we got a message that the kidney was in and they were beginning to put in the pancreas. Then around 10 pm, we found out that the waiting room we were in was closing and we had to relocate to another one... which ended up being tiiiiiny. As in, it had 6 seats in it. Sometime after 11, one of the surgeons came out and said that the pancreas was in and both organs looked beautiful. The only issue they had was that dad wasn't able to stop taking Plavix soon enough (because who can predict when organs are going to be available?) so, in the words of the surgeon, "he was oozing" and that made it difficult to choose when they would close. They had given him blood and platelets and gotten to a point where the team felt comfortable closing and letting nature take it's course and hoping his blood would start clotting soon. So, for that big of a surgery, we were all so thankful that was the only issue they had! We all hung out in the tiny waiting room and waited for them to tell us when they were done closing and where they were moving dad to afterwards. I finally fell asleep for a little while and was awakened around 1:30 or 2 by someone telling us dad was being taken to the ICU and we could go up there to see him. We headed up there, got put in yet another waiting room while they settled him in, and then finally got to see him around 2:30, I think. He was pretty much out of it, but his nurse said that everything looked good and that they were still giving him blood and platelets.
We went back to the waiting room, I made a bed on the hard floor, and finally went to sleep around 3 am. Let me just tell you that when you can only sleep on your sides (let's not forget that I'm 5 months pregnant), and the surface you're sleeping on is a hard floor, you will wake up in some pain. Man, did my hips and shoulders hurt that morning! But, it was worth it to be able to be there.
Wednesday wasn't too exciting. After sleeping about 5 hours, I got up, got breakfast with my mom and brother, and hung out for a little while. I think we went to see dad around 10 am and he was awake, but still pretty out of it. We visited for a little while, then went back to hang out in the waiting room. This was pretty much how the rest of the day went. We would check in on dad every couple hours, but he was sleeping for most of the day, so we spent the majority of the day in the waiting room and wandering the halls of the Cleveland Clinic. We headed home that night so that we could all get a good night's sleep--and let me tell you, I slept better that night than I had in months! (Nobody tells you that sleep deprivation begins at pregnancy, not birth... but that's a post for another day.)
We stayed home Thursday--mom had to work, and Hubby had the day off so he and I headed out to do some shopping and spend some time together. Then mom, brother, and I went back up to Cleveland on Friday (yesterday) to spend the day with dad.
He had been moved out of the ICU and up to a room in the transplant unit Thursday evening. When we got there on Friday, he was looking much better and, though still slightly confused (they gave him the good pain meds), he was pretty much with it and knew what was going on. He was still in quite a bit of pain, but at least now they were allowing him to have clear liquids and get out of bed a time or two. Overall, things were looking good, and hopefully will continue to look good!
We headed home that night, and then mom worked this morning and headed back up there to spend the next 3 days with him. I love my dad, but I just cannot handle sitting around all day in uncomfortable chairs. My poor pregnant body woke up so achy this morning, and I'm pretty sure it's just from all the stress, excitement, running around the hospital, and sitting in uncomfortable chairs that has happened this week, so I am hanging out on the couch today with my parents' dog and Netflix. Dad is supposed to be home either Monday or Tuesday, and mom's staying at the hospital with him until he comes home, so I'm taking this opportunity to enjoy a little quiet time around the house (ok, so there are still 3 of us here, but occasionally the boys are both gone and I get the whole house to myself, as is the case right now. It's rare, so I enjoy it while it lasts).
I had some new recipes lined up to try out on the family this week, buuuut clearly there was no time for that. Maybe my next post will be a new recipe...
Oh, on a final note, if you aren't an organ donor, seriously consider changing that. You don't know how many lives you can change by donating! And anyway--what do you need them for after you're dead? Give them to someone who's still alive that needs them!
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