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  • Thank God for Bluetooth

    I’m in the car right now. Dad’s driving and we’re speeding up 84 to Boston, and I’m bored. At this point I’m just ready for this to all be over and done with. So I figured I’d see if I could get my computer set up to use my cell phone for connectivity and it’s working just dandy. Pretty damn slick.

    So the next step in all of this lung stuff is to get to the ER at Brigham & Women’s Hospital (where I’ll be having the surgery and recovering). Once there they’ll take some blood, stick an IV in me and we wait for the lung to be ready. Beyond that we’ll see. My guess is I’ll be fully offline for at least the first few days. Though I’m sure they’ll have me up and shuffling along at least a little even by tomorrow.

    As far as visitors I don’t think I get to have any right at first. My immune system will be fairly suppressed at first and they want to eliminate any chance of infection. Check back here for more details.

    I still can’t believe it has only been a week since I was last called. And they called during the day! That was the last thing I expected!

  • What is it about Wednesdays

    Hopefully this one won’t be a false alarm. I just got a call to go to the emergency room for a lung. I’ll try and do an update from the road. Wish me luck!

  • On Breathing

    I’ve been meaning to do a lung update for ages. Since everyone keeps asking how things are going. For those of you just joining us, I have something called Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF). The Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation has a pretty decent web site on it if you want more details. But in general it means this:

    Pulmonary Fibrosis involves scarring of the lung. Gradually, the air sacs of the lungs become replaced by fibrotic tissue. When the scar forms, the tissue becomes thicker causing an irreversible loss of the tissue’s ability to transfer oxygen into the bloodstream.

    I’m not sure how I got it or even when exactly I started feeling the effects of it. In hindsight it was quite a bit before I saw a doctor about it. To put it bluntly, it sucks. I’m the kind of person who used to walk everywhere, go out dancing till the wee hours of the morning, and just be active all the time. These days I take things much more slowly.

    I’ve tried various treatments and none of them seem to have done much, except maybe stabilize my condition. I haven’t gotten any better or worse in a few years. So, the current step is waiting for a new lung. So, not much has changed. I’m definitely towards the ‘top of the list’, but that is all due to change when some new regulations go into effect that will make them order the list by ‘need’ in another month. Bah.

    So I’m now opening this up for any questions you may have about it all. Ask away, I’ll do my best to answer.

  • It Always Comes In The Middle of the Night (pt. 2)

    Well, the one thing they were waiting to hear back on came back with a result that made the lung not a good one. So no late night trips for Gregory tonight. Of course after that I’m not going to be able to sleep at all the rest of the night. I’m already feeling myself start to come down off that little adrenalin rush I got.

    I’ve been meaning to post a bit about how things have been going with this for a while, but just haven’t had a chance. I guess I should do that later today.

  • It Always Comes In The Middle Of The Night

    Well, it’s around 2:20 am and my phone just rang. It was the doctor at the transplant clinic and she was calling to say that they had a potential lung for me. They had one thing they were waiting to hear on, but if that was okay it was a go. They wanted me to start getting ready to come up to the hospital.

    So I’m freaking out just a tiny bit now. Even if I go up tonight it still isn’t 100%, but it’s pretty damn close. I’m not sure how long this means I’ll be offline for. I would like to have access again fairly soon, but that isn’t anything definite. I’m surprisingly calm about the whole thing right now. Though we’ll see how things as I get closer to the hospital.

    I’ll try and post again as I hear more (I’m going to try and do one from the road). Otherwise it may be a week or so before you hear anything. Wish me luck!