Tanya's Lung Transplant 2: Sunday 8/9/09

Tanya's progress is still remarkable and better than average. This morning around 10:00 I recieved a call from Ron her stepfather who arrived at the hospital early that she had the ventilator removed and was awake, talking and smiling. She told him she felt like she had been hit by a train and he said "A big train or a little train?" and she said "A big one." When we finally got there we saw her surgeon, and he said the lungs are working well and so is the rest of her. There is less drainage from her chest cavity than average, and it's not too bloody which is very good. They still have to keep a close eye on her reflux, so she'll be tube-fed for a while longer before she's able to eat anything. She still has terrible pain, but I wouldn't be able to tell by looking at her. If I had never met Tanya before and saw her in her bed today, I would have thought maybe she's in the hospital because of some broken ribs or a bad flu or something, I would never have guessed that less than 24 hours ago she just had such a massive and risky procedure as a double lung transplant. She looks amazing. We finally got to go into the room to see her after 5 and Kevin and Lori came to visit shortly after, which made her very happy. She was supposed to get an epidural, but the anesthesiologists were taking forever to get to the floor. I think the pharmacy is the worst department of that whole hospital. Everything takes forever. She got a dose of roxicet for the pain right before we left, which is what she received for her j-tube last month and seemed to help more than most of the other pain meds, and when I called around 9:00 pm she was finally just about to receive her epidural.

In the morning they're going to try and get her out of bed, which is important to do as soon as possible after transplant. Despite the awful pain(by the time I saw her it was like being hit by a "train AND a bus at the same time") she says she's glad she went through with it, and she's smiling ten times more than wincing.

Tanya's waving to you

She is going to be such an incredible inspiration and source of strength and motivation to people who don't know if they have the courage to go through a transplant, as she always has been to everyone around her, healthy or otherwise. Tanya hopes to one day establish contact with the donor family and express her gratitude for their tremendous gift of life saving lungs. I hope that Tanya's incredible story will help more people to realize that such an easy and effortless thing as organ donation can be such a great and immeasurable benefit to those people who are not able to take for granted the things that we do, like being able to walk twenty feet without running out of breath.