A Hospital Bed in place of a trip to Cozumel

In Transplant World, one shouldn’t count one’s chickens. My post about Randy going to Cozumel for the first time since his lung transplant tempted Fate, and instead of swimming in warm waters, he is back at UT Southwestern.

Since the transplant he has had the odd fever here and there, but it always just lasted a day or less, and then went away.  The week before our Cozumel trip Randy started running a fever every morning and every night, feeling fine in the middle of the day. We were in a quandry.  We went to UT Southwestern and they ran tests, everything coming back A-OK, but the fever persisted.  I went to Cozumel a day late with friends, and Randy had been put on antibiotics.  We expected he would join us in a couple of days, but even with the medicine he kept feeling lousy. Finally, last Friday, Randy’s transplant team put him in the hospital to run tests.  They found a blood clot in his leg….a large one.

The ripple of fear that went through me when I heard those words was ghastly.  There have been several instances of blood clots in the people around me, and only one had a happy ending.  I made arrangements to get home from Cozumel.  I flew in on Sunday, with a cold.  The doctors don’t want me near Randy, because they found something else to worry about.

We knew when Randy was transplanted that the donor lungs had a virus called CMV, a common virus that 85% of Americans have had. Randy had NOT had it. He was placed on an antiviral medication to insure that the virus would not spread to the rest of his body.  About three weeks ago Randy’s kidney blood tests showed stress…the kidneys were not happy.  All of these meds have to be filtered, or processed, through the liver and the kidneys. As a result, they drastically lowered his antiviral medicine, and his antibiotic.  This sudden reduction in medicine let the CMV virus infect Randy.

So Randy is fighting off a virus, and while running fevers and feeling ill he developed a blood clot from inactivity. I cannot go and sit with him in his hospital room because I have a cold and congestion, and Randy is extremely vulnerable to any infection right now.  We are both frustrated that we cannot be together, but at least I am close by, and we talk and text all the time.  Today, we both need rest.

There are bound to be blips on the screen as his recovery continues…and I continue to be positive about his recovery.  He will get through this, and then he will need to build up his strength.  Another challenge he will get through.

Thank you for your prayers and positive energies.