This has certainly been the week from hell. I've had a lot of stress recently concerning my lung transplant.
Tuesday night, after a long 13 hour day, I got a phone call that they had a lung and I was the backup to receive it. They didn't want me to come down to the hospital though, they wanted me to wait at home till I heard something. Honestly, My immeadiate response was, "wow! It is really happening." The problem was, I had to wait. And as I waited I got more freaked out. I called my parents right away and told them I might be going in. I then called my friend Emily and talked to her for a bit. As time went on I found myself getting more and more emotional, agitated, scared. Especially scared. Time passed. It was three am now, I was talking to some friends online about it. I tried to spin records for a while. All the while just getting more freaked out about the whole thing. By the time they called back at 5am I was a wreck. I have no idea how I must have sounded to the doctor on the other end, but I felt like I had just lost touch with everything around me. I'd never felt so terrified and alone.
Needless to say, I told them I couldn't do it. In case folks out there don't know, this is something they DO NOT like you to do. So it was a VERY big deal for me to do this. I'm still very torn about it and have a hard time talking about it. What this whole situation did do for me is to really make me think about things to do with my transplant. First off. I can't do this alone. I usually have a hard time admitting to myself that I need help. But this made me realize how much I do need it. I should have been on the phone with friends and had someone come over and be with me, to keep me calm. Because that is what did me in. If they had called at midnight and said "come on down" I would have been out of the house as soon as a cab could arrive at my house. On the other hand, I think there are parts of me that still haven't fully accepted this. When I look back it is all still very overwhelming. It was under a year ago that my doctor even suggested that I needed to have a transplant (or maybe just about a year ago). And now, just a few months after being listed I come up. Honestly, I thought I had a longer wait. That really shouldn't make a difference, but I think it just all added to the unrealness of it in my head.
There is another issue too. My life keeps changing and right now the thought of putting it on hold scares me. So much has changed in my situation since I got on the list. I have my own team at work now. I'm running the IT group, and even the role of my department is growing. I have more responsibilities and I feel like I am doing a really good job with the job (and the feedback I've been getting seems to agree with this). My DJing is taking off. I feel like I'm getting better and better. I've gotten a lot of good feedback on my CD which seems to indicate I've made tons of progress (and still have more). So, all of a sudden, I have started to realize that the thought of putting all that on hold scares me. Back when I was first going through the transplant stuff, none of this was an issue.
So, I have a lot to think about, and quickly. I am currently inactive on the transplant list, which means they won't call me if there is a match. I need to really assure myself in my head that this is what I want. And also I need to not let myself get the better of me. Ask for help from friends. Learn as much as I can from this. I was very suprised at my reaction to the whole thing. I truely believed that I would be able to handle it.
So that's where I am right now. Kind of in a state of limbo. I'm waiting to hear back from my social worker. And writing this. My hope is that writing all this down will help to let me get out all the icky stuff in my head surrounding this so that I can talk about it a little bit better and work towards focusing on what is important, getting healthy again.
