Tag: clotting factor

Liverversary

~ Linda Wright

Three years ago today, I was wheeled into surgery at 6:30 in the evening. I had been on hold in the Intensive Care Unit of Florida State University’s Hospital. During those eighteen hours, I was acutely aware that I was waiting for one person’s life to end so that my life could be saved. As I watched the clock move forward, I had time to sit with the choice I had made to have a transplant, then consider the choice some family would be making to donate the organs of a loved one. It felt like I had been given a gift I was not worthy to receive and that someone else had received a punishment they did not deserve.

I was also aware that I was not alone. Robin had slept on a day bed in the room with me the night before. More than forty friends and family members had signed up to be with me virtually through my hospitalization and recovery period. Some of those folks kept in touch with me through text messaging and well wishes online. Some of those folks lived close enough that they checked on our house while we were away. Many would help me once I returned home in more ways than I can count. I was overcome with gratitude and still am today.

When the transplant surgeon came to my room earlier that morning he asked me how I was feeling about the surgery. I said, “Excited and terrified.”

Since my blood did not clot without infusions of clotting factor, I was an unusual challenge for the surgical team. I was not the only person who was anxious. The nurse coordinator blurted out one day, “I’m sure you are almost as worried as I am.” I imagine she meant to say that the other way around. Hours of meetings, weeks of testing and re-testing were done to reassure everyone involved that this procedure could be done successfully. Still I’m pretty sure we all had our lingering doubts. Like a rollercoaster ride there was something risky and something thrilling about to take place. Something that would be written up in the medical journals no matter what the outcome.

Robin was in the waiting room that night for almost eight hours. It was 2:05 am when the doctor came out to tell her all had gone well. That wasn’t the end of the story, but it was a new beginning.

Tomorrow will be my three-year liverversary. I will never know about the person who was born with the liver that is now in my body. This is not a happy anniversary for that person’s family. I wish I could offer them sympathy. I will never know all of the medical specialists who read the results of tests I took or who were consulted on my unusual case. I wish I could say thank you to all of them. I don’t remember the faces of all the nurses or names of the respiratory therapists who assisted me when I needed them. I will always be grateful for their compassion. They taught me about the way kindness ripples out further than any one of us may ever realize.

Where Did I Go Wrong?

Statue of person holding drooping head with one hand
~ Linda Wright

Tuesday morning I telephoned the doctor. I’d stayed awake most of the night wondering what I could have done that would cause my right shoulder to hurt. I certainly did not want to get an infusion of clotting factor, we had been enjoying a month at the beach and we had been there less than a week. I wasn’t actually sure I had a bleed in my shoulder joint. “It might just be arthritic pain from an old injury,” I said to the answering machine and asked the doctor to decide if I should get an infusion. The recorded message promised that a nurse would get back to me soon.

It had been years since pain in this shoulder had kept me awake. The first time I had an x-ray that showed previous injuries, joint damage, but not active bleeding. I went to a physical therapist and the pain eventually subsided although it came back whenever I didn’t keep the exercises up. I had no memory of a bleed in that shoulder, but the x-ray was proof.

The older I get the more previous injuries become painful. I feel ashamed that I can’t tell the difference each time a doctor says, “Why didn’t you call me sooner?” The implication is that I was in denial. That is probably at least partly true. However, I have also had false alarms and then the doctor’s scornful reproach implies hypochondria.

The next time I had pain in that shoulder was when we moved to Florida six years ago. That time I tried to return to the exercises but the pain got worse by the day. I had been packing and hefting books for our move to Florida. Motivated to meet the deadline for packing I suppressed my doubts until the pain became so intense I had no choice but to go to the Emergency Room and get infused. The doctor told me to rest the shoulder and wrote a prescription for a narcotic pain medication. Resting was not an option. The movers were coming in a day or two and we would be loading the car and driving south to Florida from Massachusetts whether my arm had healed or not.

We arrived in Tallahassee a few days before the moving van and settled the cat in our new house before the three of us checked into a motel. The next few days we spent shopping for essentials and delivering them to the house. We made frequent trips to the house to feed and reassure the cat. My arms loaded with supplies I missed a step and landed on the paved walkway to our new front door. Not only did I smash my glasses, bruising my face, I hit my right knee and landed on my shoulder, the same shoulder that had been injured packing books. That time it took several re-infusions of fibrinogen to subside and the doctor instructed me not to lift anything over five pounds.

So after calling the doctor’s office on Tuesday morning I waited, and waited, and waited. No return call as promised. Wednesday morning I called again and this time I was more sure of myself. The pain was worse. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” apologized the nurse. “I’ll schedule the infusion for this afternoon, can you get here by 2 pm?”

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, “Where have I gone wrong?” Then a voice says to me, “This is going to take more than one night.”

Cartoon boy extending both arms appears to be wailing

—Charles M. Schulz