The Night Of

• 

6/24/2014

I visit my doctor again- it’s the third time this week I’ve come to the University of Penn. He tells me we need to get on the transplant list. There are no other options left. These lungs have no other choice. I’m depending on an organ donor to save my life— if I even survive a transplant. I’m not sure at this point that I’m strong enough. My spirit is trying hard to scrape up any motivation to continue living as long as I possibly can. Every 24 hours counts. I have to keep fighting. These next few weeks are so crucial.

Someone in my family tells me about this activity that worked for her. It’s a way to call upon the Archangels. You write a wish, a petition, on a piece of paper. Light a candle and put an apple on the same table. You burn your paper wish in the fire of the lit candle and let the smoke disappear outside into the wild air. I would have tried far more strange things then that at this point. I would have tried anything. So, I do that and hope for the best.

I already visited Johns Hopkins Center in Maryland for a second opinion and received the same results. I’m from right outside Philadelphia so it wasn’t too far of a haul.

I’m naive, which makes things better for my mind at the time. I’m mostly thinking, it may take some time but I’m going to get lungs, right? No matter how many times I’ve been told that death is nearby, I feel like there’s so much more to my life. I feel in my bones that something is coming. Something big. Something life changing. And it was. It was June 23, 2014. I’m sitting on the couch getting a nebulizer. I’m eating an ice cream magic cup in between. It’s like a high fat, high calorie ice cream cup that tastes like it’s name, magic. It’s to help me gain weight and I eat probably 3-5 a day. It’s equivalent to a meal. My mom walks in the door shaken up. “Sam…”

A few days before this, mom accidentally backed her car up into mine. It left a nice little cracked hole in my bumper.

“Omg, mom. You hit my car again?” I ask, annoyed. I’m out of breath from that simple sentence.

“They just called. Eric, from the transplant center. Sam, It’s time.”

Tears fill my eyes right away. I’ve been told before there may be false alarms. I might be called for a transplant, get to the hospital and then could be told the lungs didn’t pass inspection and I could be sent home. I’m trying not to get my hopes up. I’m shaking. What if it’s not a false alarm? What if this is it. What if someone just died and selflessly left the most beautiful gift of all behind on this earth for me to continue to live. This can’t be happening. Am I dreaming?

“Come on, get up, let’s go! We don’t have much time. We need to get to Penn now.”

We had to take my grandfathers car. We weren’t prepared and moms car didn’t have gas. We wouldn’t have time to stop. Never did I expect only 20 days after being placed on the list that I would actually be called. But, transplants go by priority, and my life depends on this. The surgeon says these look like a perfect match for my size. I’m less nervous than I expected but the feeling was nothing I could possibly explain. Tonight could change life as i know it. Tonight, I could die on that table.

I’m in the backseat of our 20 minute ride to Penn. Mom and dad in the front. I’m texting my closest friends, Alicia.. Alexis. “I just got the call. I need my prayer warriors now more than ever.” I don’t have it in me to text anyone else but I know Alicia will get the word out for prayer.

I walked in through the emergency room with my mom and dad. My brother met us there and they put us in a transplant waiting room while they tested the lungs and prepared for the surgery. My closest family started to pile in. The Grays: the family that would soon become my “team” – my strongest source of support. We had a full waiting room. I wore my high school navy blue sweatshirt. O’Hara. My time in high school was such a big part of my short life. If i don’t make it through this surgery I want to be remembered in this sweatshirt.

My brother is my best friend. He seems cool and collected. He’s always so strong. How does he do it? He’s also in his high school sweatshirt, Monsenior Bonner. I ask him, “What if I don’t make it through. You know you’re my best friend, right? I love you so much, Tommy.” He has Cystic Fibrosis too but he’s always been the healthier one. He’s never had to even consider a transplant. I hope he stays like this forever.

He pulls me close, he’s taller and stronger than me. I’m under his arm and for the first time tonight I feel safe. “I know, kid. You’re the strongest person I know and you’re going to be fine.” I don’t know if he even believes himself, but he gives me hope.

They come in the room. “Samantha, we’re ready for you.” I have to leave my family now. I have to go off alone with these doctors and nurses that I don’t know and depend on them to save my life. They are going to break me open by the chest, take out these failing lungs and replace them with a selfless organ donors lungs who had just passed away maybe an hour or so ago. Their family mourns in the waiting room directly across from mine.

Surgery lasted all night until the morning. They were almost a complete match but the lungs had to be trimmed a bit to fit inside my chest. It’s June 24th and I’m alive. Im alive.

Im not out of the woods but I survived.

I’m alive.

I’m coming out of heavy anesthesia. Family surrounding my bed and scattered around the room. There’s tubes all throughout my chest and stomach. Thick plastic tubes. Like an octopus. I’m hooked up to what looks like a million machines. There’s beeping, there’s whispers, there’s tears of joy and apprehension. I can’t believe it. I blink a few times before I fully open my eyes for the first time. Through the most extreme pain and discomfort, I’m breathing and it feels like there’s nothing in the way of my breath. It feels so foreign to me. I feel like, despite this deep ache and severe chest pain, my breathing is different than anything I’ve ever felt in all twenty some years of life as I knew it. I think to myself, so this is it? This is what it feels like to breathe like a normal human being? Softly, I look up at mom bedside. “Mom? I did it? I did it. We did it.” There’s tears in her eyes. “We did.”

I say we because I feel like she almost had a transplant too by how much she’s been right by my side through years of sickness and sadness. Years of suffering. I’m weak and tired. My childhood doctor from my children’s hospital is here. Dr. Schidlow. He’s guided & treated me through life with Cystic Fibrosis.

My adult pulmonologist, Dr. Dorgan, is in the middle of the room embraced in a moment holding my brother in a huge hug. Both their cheeks have tears rolling down them. My sweet, favorite Sister from Camilla Hall is here beside my bed with a holy communion host in a shiny golden case. My faith hasn’t ever been stronger. Im alive.

I’m weak and soft spoken but I ask her a favor as I’m coming out of grogginess. A memory I’ll keep inside my heart & mind for as long as I live. “Will you sing with me?” I ask her. My favorite church song is “Here I am Lord.” I’m certain she knows the words and I look into her crystal blue eyes. She takes my hand in hers and sings along with me, “Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord? I have heard you calling in the night. I will go, Lord, if you lead me, I will hold your people in my heart.”

It took everything I had to push those musical words out but I needed to acknowledge my faith. I’m saved. Will I survive this recovery? Right now it doesn’t matter. The doctor says the first 72 hours are the absolute most crucial.

It may have only been a few hours since coming out of surgery but I am now a bilateral lung transplant survivor. An organ transplant recipient. Life as I knew it up until this point is about to drastically change. Life as I knew was over. My second life had started and I make a promise to myself from this day forward to live every single day like it’s my very last.