Happy New Year Everyone! I hope that everyone had a blessed Christmas and is looking forward to the new year. Our Christmas was special again this year. Bill's sister and her husband came up from Florida. This was the first time they had been here and, we found out later, the first Christmas they had spent away from home! We had a wonderful visit with them. All Shirley wanted for Christmas was snow and a fire in the fireplace. The fire was easy to do, and we had fires daily. It also helped that it was really cold! It also snowed Christmas morning! Nothing stayed on the ground, but it was pretty as it was falling. Don wanted a winning lottery ticket so Bill put some scratch-off tickets in everyone's stocking. Don ended up winning $20! Talk about your perfect hosts!
Bill has been pretty tired since they went home last week and he's having a hard time dealing with things going on in the church. We are probably going to leave this church and find another. He's been very upset about it and it's affecting his sleep and his appetite. He's going to council with a respected friend and former pastor for some guidance in this.
No dr. appointments until the middle of February and the extra amiodorone has kept his heart rate around 70. That's a little higher than normal, but not in the danger area at all. He will probably have that amount reduced when we go to Memphis next month. A device check was done either right before or right after Christmas and everything looked fine. It didn't show any rapid heart beats or fluid build-up.
People have asked if he is still on the transplant list. The answer is yes. Even though it seems like he's been on it forever, it's still been under 2 years and the average wait for a heart is 18 months. We are just past 20 months. It's become a way of life, not even thinking about it. We don't sit and wait for the phone to ring, and we're not afraid to leave the house in case we miss the call. We just make sure that 1 of us always has our cell phone.
All for this time. I'll try to do better to keep this thing updated this year. As I said before, this journey has days and weeks and months when nothing happens. And we lead very normal, boring lives!
Blessings to all!
I stumbled upon your blog a week or so ago, I finally have the chance to actually sit and read it. My husband, Patrick, is waiting for a heart transplant at Stanford. He's only been on the list for a little over a month now. We were told that with his blood type and height that the average wait for him would be about 2 years. So we've been trying to live life as normal as possible. The biggest part for us is not being able to travel farther than 4 hours from the hospital. His family all live 6 hours or more away and my family is all back east.
ReplyDeleteGood luck to you and your husband, and I'll check back often.