May 31, 2011 – Day before surgery:
5:45am – wake up and eat as much breakfast as humanly possible. I had two big waffles with peanut butter and honey and a big cup of tea. I forced myself to eat every bite I could, since that would be my last meal for the next couple of days. I took my kids to a family friend’s house for the day and headed off to work. It was a fairly slow day at school, but kept myself busy and not too hungry by drinking a half-gallon of juice. I then realized I was on pace to drink the whole thing, which was going to be 1500 calories and more carbs and sugar than I had consumed in the whole week leading up to it. The last thing I wanted was a sugar high on top of the empty stomach and nerves so I switched back to water, and drank only a few more diluted glasses of juice.
The nerves I was feeling for the day were mostly stemmed from the bowel prep that I was about to go through. The nice thing about where I work is that most of my co-workers are in the colonoscopy age range so I spent my spare time asking each and every one of them about their experience. I can honestly tell you I have never talked about poop more in my life. I wasn’t so nervous about the pooping as I was about having to get to Seattle that night, and hoping that I would be able to make it w/out incident (or should I say accident?). Each of my co-workers were so nice, I was expecting to be laughed at, called a sucker or taught the secret handshake of those in the colonoscopy club but I was just reassured that it was not that bad and that you need to stay near the toilet while the magnesium citrate works its magic then I would be able to travel after that. There was definitely a range of times people thought it would start working- some said 20 minutes and others said an hour or two. And the same was for how long it would last, but all assured me that they were able to sleep through the night without having to get up and go, so it would come to an end at some point.
As the students left for the day I hurriedly cleaned my desk and took care of last minute details that needed attention. I snuck out the door and tried to avoid teary-eyed hugs from work friends. I knew if I started crying I might not be able to pull it together. One of those days!
As I was picking up my two little girls from the babysitter the most amazing (need a different word) thing happened. As I mentioned much earlier in the blog, my college roommate’s dad had a heart transplant now 23 years ago and that greatly influenced my decision to donate. Well, that man lived two houses down from where my children regularly play for the day. In the last 10 months of picking up and dropping my kids off three times a week I have never seen him until that day. He was standing at the fence between the yards and I saw him as I pulled in. I was on the phone with Cherina and we were both nervously talking about our days. I hung up with Cherina and I walked over to John to give him a huge hug and tell him about how he inspired me to give life the following day. He was thinner, a little greyer, and looked a little less healthy than the last time I saw him but he insisted that he was doing well. He told me that he was just at UWMC the week before and his cardiologist couldn’t believe how well he was still doing. John said that they had expected him to live five years at most after the transplant and that if he died tomorrow he would be okay with it because he has seen all of his kids graduate, become a grandpa and had 23 more years than anyone had expected. He said that he was one of the first transplants that his surgeon had ever done and he’d been going to the same doctor all these years. He told his doctor that he couldn’t retire until he died because he didn’t want to have to “train another one of you” and he said his doctor’s reply was, “you’d better hurry up then”. I hope that I can some day look at my life and say that I was thankful for every day, that I wasn’t afraid of the unknown, that I was content with what I had and who I was.
Talk about seeing God’s plan unfold in front of me. God put John at that fence on that day for me to hug and see first hand how one incredible gift can shape the future. God put John there to ease any nervousness I may have had, to fill my heart with hope and to understand His plan and feel His love. We might be looking at a situation and ask how God could let someone like Cherina have so much pain in her life, but what he is really doing is showing us how perfectly he can orchestrate her recovery. She may have been born, for lack of a better word, broken but through His grace He put her back together.
Back to my day– I picked my kids up, was home minutes later and started drinking the magnesium citrate – the sparkling lemon laxative according to the label. It was AWEFUL. Super bubbly like an extra fizzy pop, super lemony and sour and excessively salty. Like someone poured all of the salt into the margheritta instead of putting it on the rim, and then left out the alcohol and replaced it with a laxative. I drank about half of it and was struggling to go on so I sent a text to my family asking them to cheer me on. After funny replies about remembering my college days, or suggestions about pouring it into margheritta or martini or shot glasses I was able to get it down and immediately had to go to the bathroom. Turns out that was just nerves getting the best of me because I certainly FELT it when the they hit about an hour after the bottle was emptied.
I spent my time at home that night trying to throw stuff in an overnight bag, hug my kids and using the bathroom. We were able to catch a 7:50 ferry to Seattle and we just sat right next to the bathroom. By that point it had tapered quite a bit and I was able to just quickly go and then get out. At 8:00 I was supposed to drink two liters of water/juice in the next four hours. So full Nalgene in hand the water consumption began, and my bathroom trips were upped again. We got to the hotel a little after 9 and we tried to relax. Cherina and her Aunt Swedini (the one who started it all!) stopped by around 10 and we visited for 20 minutes or so. Mostly just nervous chatter. But it was really good to see her! After she left I showered and used the special antibacterial soap that they gave me, scrubbing for 10 minutes is a long time! Showered, water consumed, bathroom usage subsided and asleep just a little after midnight with an alarm set for 5:30
~Kara
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