From the category archives:

Transplants

There is something emotional to the core about Cystic Gal getting her new lungs tonight as I type. She is currently under the knife having her wretched, diseased lungs carefully removed from her chest cavity. Beautiful said she felt the same way when Piper got her lungs, but I wasn’t following Piper like I have been CG, because CG is all over Twitter and the blogs with comments and such.

Beth Peters (CG) is my first cystic fibrosis friend to receive her dream of new lungs. Everyone else has become a friend post facto, at the very earliest with me finding out they got “the call” and following them as their transplant day progressed.

Beautiful asked me what I was feeling about her transplant before she went to bed tonight. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it because it’s not like we’re great friends, but we have hundreds of tweets going back and forth and understand each other pretty well. We are both fighters. She’s going this alone in Boston, and I have to respect that a ton.

My eventual answer was I’m feeling emotional because, barring a cure that prevents CFers with my level of pulmonary damage from ever needing a transplant, this will happen to us someday. I’m banking, praying, and working towards health and a cure, but I’m witnessing what could be exactly what we experience some day in the future. It’s scary. It’s exciting. Did I mention that it’s scary and exciting?

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Hattie Dunstan

Hattie Dunstan

On Monday, July 5, 2010, Hattie Dunstan got the call at 1am to come to Toronto General Hospital for new lungs. By 4pm, the miracle of transplantation was complete and her cystic fibrosis-riddled lungs were gone. Her new life, while still heavily sedated until the next morning, had begun.

I love reading these stories, because it was one more person on my blogroll who went from the purple “Waiting for new lungs” status to the green “Transplant recipient” status. I’m looking forward to not being able to find anyone on the list blogging away their days waiting for new lungs. I’d rather that my list be all green “new lung” blogs, white “I’m doing fine” blogs, and pink “I’m sticking by my CFer” blogs. Say “no” to purple!

Two more on the list to go! Hang in there Beth and Dustin. I was just reading Hattie’s post from July 2nd a moment ago, and I got choked up remembering reading it on the 4th, with none of us knowing she was getting new lungs the very next day! Here is what she wrote:

The word breathless has taken on a whole new meaning. I thought I knew what being out of breath was. I thought I knew what not breathing was like…no…not until this week did I know what it is like to struggle…and that’s saying something!

I cannot even get over how much my breath has now been taken from me. Doing anything leaves me gasping, haunted, winded, exploded, breathless. It is absolutely insane, terrifying and unbelievable that something as breathing can be soooo hard, even harder then before!

Amazing! Go, Hattie, go!