A Long Day With No Red Flags

My Awesome Husband Greg and I left early this morning for the hour-plus drive to Duke University Medical Center for breathing tests and doctors' appointments. That made it feel a little bit like a vacation. It also felt like a vacation because I did not sleep well last night. I never sleep before road trips and doctors' appointments. But I had no reason to worry. Unlike our real vacation last summer, when we left an hour later than planned and then had to return to the house for a forgotten bag, we actually left a few minutes early, and arrived with almost a half-hour to spare.

After check-in and a brief wait, I had to report for my pulmonary function tests. These tests aren't painful, but they are uncomfortable. I never had to do them when I had full lung capacity, so I have no basis for comparison; with 40 percent lung function, taking a deep breath, holding it, and then blowing it out forcefully is nearly impossible. It makes you feel like part of a lung is coming out with your last ounce of breath.

Normally, the technicians who perform the tests are kind, encouraging types who smile warmly and talk a lot. They say things like "You are doing a fantastic job!" as I sit there gasping for breath between tests. Apparently, all those girls had Cyber Monday off. Today I had Dianna--whom I liked immensely better. She was straightforward in delivering her instructions. I knew I needed to listen the first time. She said things like, "Is that really all the air you can take in?" and "You're breathing from your neck. Use your lungs!" Like I said, I liked her, but I was not encouraged. She sent me on to my next appointment with a deep-seated sense of worry which lasted until I saw the pulmonologist later in the afternoon.

I love both of the doctors I saw today--the pulmonologist and the transplant doctor. If they weren't doctors with crazy busy schedules, I would like to hang out with them. They read all the reports on my breathing tests and lab work, and both agreed that even though a couple of numbers had dropped just a little bit, they saw no red flags. I get to remain on the "inactive" pre-transplant list. It was all I could have hoped for.

Plus, well, you know how I like to worry? Well, the transplant doc gave me a brand new reason to worry. She thought we'd already discussed this, but No. I would have remembered: Apparently, two visits ago, I showed that I had antibodies against 70 percent of the population. Meaning that of all the lungs that might be available for transplant at the time I need one, 70 percent of them would likely cause serious rejection problems and not be worth transplanting. Yikes! Pretty narrow field, right? Well, for some reason, the tests they did at my last visit show that I now only have antibodies against 49 percent of the population. Better, right? But still lots of reason to worry...

The way I see it, it's a win-win situation. I get to keep my "Still Too Healthy" shirt, and I have something new to fret about. Life is still good!