Today is the day, 5 Years since transplant!

It was five years ago today that I received my liver transplant. It was the second time I had gone to the hospital for to await transplant. The first time I was a backup candidate in case the person the liver was designated for was not able to receive it. Fortunately he was able to get his chance at life.

It was around 3:30 pm when I was taken back to the operating room to begin my liver transplant. As the nurses shifted me from the gurney to the narrow operating table, the thought that kept going through my mind was “Wow, am I really here now?”.

They strapped my arms to outstretched parts that were at 90 degrees to the table. At one point I remember thinking that it was almost like a cross. They then put these hard plastic boots on my feet and calves.

It was quite surreal as I looked around the room at the massive amount of surgical equipment and number of people that was there. I have to admit that I was a little nervous. After all I hadn’t been in a hospital since I was a young child when I was seven years old for a broken arm.

The nurses asked me how I was doing, I told them that I was fine. Then I asked them a favor, I said “I don’t care what you do to me just please make sure that I don’t feel or remember anything”. I then said a little prayer asking God to keep me in His hands, whether I lived or I died. I praised Him for who He is and all He had done. The last thing I remember was the nurse telling me to count backwards from one hundred. I doubt if I made it past ninety.

I awoke late the next afternoon in the ICU with a breathing tube in my throat. The nurses shortly removed it, without much discomfort. This was a surprise to me because before when I had this it was very painful. They showed me how to clear my throat with a vacuum wand and soon allowed me to have some liquids. The next day they moved me to the recovery floor.

The first really big thing that I noticed different was the next morning as I was waking up I could feel the sun shining through the window and it really warmed me up. This was a huge deal because I had spent the last two years being cold and never being able to get warm.

I recovered pretty quickly and was walking the halls to get my strength back. On the 13th of March I was discharged being deemed fit enough to go home to recuperate.

I remember having tears in my eyes as I rode home in the car. I was looking out the window at all the things going by and thinking that I almost didn’t get a chance to ever see them again. I felt then, and do now as well, so thankful to God for the miracles He has performed in my life.

So March 5th, 2009 was the day that changed everything for me and I look back on it fondly. I give God all of the glory for what He has done and I hope that I can be the person that He wants me to be while I am still here on this earth.

Ramblings of a Dying Man

When a person has a terminal illness it is a very difficult for people around them to understand just what they are going through. Obviously the family and loved ones can see the toll that the illness is taking on that person but they cannot understand the mental impact that having a terminal illness has.

When a hope for a chance at a new life is offered through some miraculous way, the ill person focuses on that chance and does everything that they can to meet the requirements to be a candidate. But this still causes a rollercoaster of emotions as they go through one medical incident after another.

Whether it is a coma, or internal bleeding, or low sodium, or anemia, all of these things take a toll on the individual that is dying. And because in my case, I had to get very close to death before I was the number 1 candidate for transplant and they would start looking for a match. Dying changes a person.

I am not talking about death but the process of dying. For some it is very short, an aneurism, a heart attack, or perhaps a catastrophic accident. But for me, I spent two years dying.

Every time I went to the hospital, only to be patched up and sent home until the next time. You have constant pain; see the looks that you get from your loved ones. As the “Man” of the family and the primary bread winner, I continued to work until my partners said enough. I went through five hospitalizations before that happened. I went through six more before it was over.

To know that you are no longer an able person, and that you must rely on others for many of even the most basic functions of life is difficult. Help getting washed, being driven because the doctors have said that you cannot drive anymore, and watching your home start to decay around you knowing that there is nothing you can do.

Death is easy, dying is hard! I kept a positive attitude for my family, the doctors, and friends. Meanwhile inside, I always knew the pain I had, the feeling of slipping away a little at a time. Feeling depressed, and yet unable to express this emotion because if they thought that you were not suitable then “Off You Go” from the potentially lifesaving transplant list.

My brain swelled at least three times, twice causing comas and once causing me to hallucinate and be blinded for five days. I lost count of the number of times they had to put a needle in my abdomen to drain fluid out of it. We are not talking just a little, the least was four liters, and the most was six liters at one time. Imagine having a gallon of milk in your stomach and you will begin to get some idea of how that is. It is called ascites.

One of the things that happened during my dying process was that I had to re-evaluate my life and my actions. I knew that there were things that I had done in the past that was not right, and certainly not Christian. I have always believed in God and Jesus, but for me they could have been out there playing marbles because I felt that they were not watching over me. But now I had reason to think this over again.

I had coincidences happen a lot. A man I shared a hospital room with was a Christian and he was visited often by his church friends and family. He took time to speak with me and encourage me when I felt I needed it most.

One time while I was in the hospital the nurses had made a mistake and as a result could not give me any pain medication. As my abdomen grew larger and larger the fluid pressed on my heart making it race, on my lungs making it hard to breath, on my stomach causing bad nausea, and made my back muscles cramp tight. The pain was tremendous.

Tears were pouring down my face as I cried out to God to take away the pain or to take me home, I just couldn’t stand it anymore. Then suddenly and quite completely my pain was gone and I was still alive. God had taken away my pain; he had heard me and answered my plea. I was in awe.

After you go through something this powerful there is no possible way you will deny God’s existence. I really do not care what anyone else thinks about that, I know what I experienced and I am convinced. I now knew that not only was God always near me but that He listened to me and responded to me as well.

With that being true it was not a great leap of faith for me to believe that Jesus was the “Word made Flesh”. He was man and God. I then deduced that if that was true then it was also true that Jesus voluntarily died for us on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins. Most importantly Jesus was raised bodily back to life on the third day forever conquering death, sin, and hell.

I found my faith again, only this time I knew that it was true, all true! I had my own proof. I have no recollection of what happened to me during my two comas but I do remember parts of what occurred during my delirium. I remembered vividly a story about Jews that were in different countries around the world that were trying to come home to Israel.

I thought that I was a peasant in Russia that couldn’t afford my food and my medicine and had to choose. I thought that I was Abraham looking over the desert at the Promised Land, and then I thought I was Moses leading the Jews into the Promised Land. I remember Ethiopian Jews trying to get back to Israel, and lost people that had immigrated, only to live in the streets of Jerusalem. It was so vivid that I thought that I was there. It later turned out to be an infomercial for Jewish Repatriation that had been on. Thank God it wasn’t a horror movie, who knows what I may have hallucinated.

I remember asking where my granddaughter was even though she hadn’t been born yet. I remember thinking that I could not find my son, and that my daughter had not been born yet. I remember people coming in and laying hands on me. They prayed and sang hymns over me and a little girl with them asking if it was alright for her to touch me, she didn’t want to hurt me. I felt such love for that little girl and didn’t want her to be afraid.

When my delirium was finally brought under control they called in a neurosurgeon to test me for stroke, and found that my brain was perfectly normal. These are just some of the coincidences that occurred.

The week before my transplant I was especially weak, tired, and in pain. I was really at the end of my life, I could feel it. This is something that a dying person can sense. I prayed to God and told him that I was done. I just could not continue fighting for my life, I had nothing left. This was the night before my transplant and I told Him that He had full control of my life. I was done. I received the call three hours later that it was my turn to receive life.

I cannot explain the feeling that went through my head that moment except that I dropped to my knees weeping and thanking God for His faithfulness. My daughter called my parents and we got ready to go.

It is at this time that a dying person begins to think that everything is going to turn out perfectly. They will get their new life, the family and loved ones will be relieved and then everyone lives “Happily Ever After”.

Now it is time to back that truck up. What I found out was that for a while everyone is happy and delirious that you have survived. Then the things that were left to stagnate when this whole process started begin to come back out. All the bitterness, the anger, and self-centered behavior come back slowly at first but don’t let it fool you. It is just as devastating now as it was when it was first put away.

As a newly faithful Christian, I wanted to find a church, read the Bible, and to “Walk in the Light”. Follow how Jesus was and listen to his commands. I was able to do that for ten months. I had no hate or anger against anyone for all that time.

Unfortunately it was just a matter of time before some family members selfishly believed they could do whatever they wanted no matter who it hurt. They hurt many of the people around me and destroyed many relationships for no real reason other than selfishness and self satisfaction.

This caused me to feel hate again. The desire to protect one’s family is so ingraned into most men that when something like this happens you just want to make the person at fault pay for the damage they have done. But as a Christian, I am commanded to love my enemies, and to be kind and not vengeful. After all “Vengence is mine saith the Lord.” So I have prayed for the ones in question and asked God to help me forgive them because I know that I could not do this on my own.

I once thought that after I got my gift of life that life would be wonderful. But this is the fallen earth, and the fallen human race and nothing can ever be completely wonderful. Pride, offense, jealousy, hate, self-centeredness, continue on without pause. The whole “it is all about me” attitude that many people have is just wearying.

I lived to see my first grandchild born, to see my daughter become the head drum major of her marching band, to see my son become a man with his own family, and to be able to take a trip and see all of my family that I could. These things are greatly satisfying and I am glad to have been here to experience them.

My marriage remains much the same as it was before my dying. I can still be pushed past the edge and act like a heathen, although it is becoming a rarer event. I have the same problems and more because my health has not improved enough to allow me to do normal things on a normal basis. I can do some things but then it takes a huge toll on my body that for every half day of minor labor is followed by two to three days of complete fatigue.

As a dying person I can tell you from experience what it was like to be dying and what it was like to live again. But there are times, especially when things are difficult, that I think back and wonder what if God had let me die and brought me home. There is a certain appeal. At the time I knew that my soul was ready, and right now I could be in Heaven with God and Jesus. I would have no more tears, no more heartache, no more troubles, and no more pain, just eternal love. That is a hard one to pass up thinking about. There are times that I yearn for it; I just wish that it all was over.

But then I remember that I am not here because of random circumstances. God had a reason for keeping me here. I don’t know if I have completed that task yet or not, I probably will never know. I have to take comfort in the fact that God loved me enough to give me a second chance. I have to find the will and the faith to continue on, secure in the knowledge that God knows what He is doing and trusting Him before all others.

Discouragement comes frequently, how else is the devil going to try and shake up your life? I guess it is my job to outlast the devil until God does finally call me home. I am not afraid of dying, I have already done that. I am not afraid of death either because Jesus has conquered it. I look forward to the day that my Heavenly Father takes me Home.

Until then……I will wait as faithfully as I can.