Heart Transplant Advice

I can't offer anything else except to echo everyone else here. I'm sorry, and keep fighting.

 

Best of luck and keep fighting. I always root for the good guys. Rooting for you.

 

It saddens me to say "I've got nothing, but good thoughts going your way."

My cousin's husband was about 60 and get this, got both a heart transplant and a kidney transplant within 24 hours of each (not sure which was first) and lived at least 10 yrs more. Miracles do happen.

All the best to you.

 

Dan, others have alluded to this: do what the docs say. Before and after. After seems obvious, but it's amazing how many ditch protocols. I live with a transplantee and she follows orders to the smallest detail. Stays current on meds (ahead of them on refills, etc) and gets labs and attends docs religiously. Again, that's after. Seems easy enough, and it is. Before, though, which is where you are, do whatever they say so you stay compliant. You can get bumped down, or off, the UNOS list if you don't do what they say (for example, and I doubt this is you, but smoking will get you bumped off; drinking too in some cases). And, no joking at all, keep your cell phone charged, with you and the ringer turned up to 11. You never know when that call is coming and you don't want to miss it.

 

Nothing much to add to the good advice above, but beaming out good wishes and hope for better days to come. If you need a place to vent and blow off some steam, we're here.

Good luck, sir.

 

Best-best-best of luck, Dan. !!! We've never actually met, but we have
a lot of mutual friends. And I know they ALL would say the same.

 

Junkie seems to have touched all the bases with that advice. Jump through all the hoops they ask, the medical community wants you to be a success and are setting you up for success. Stay strong and marvel at the medical miracle you are. Best to you.

 

Agreed. Junkie nailed it with the advice. I'll be keeping good thoughts for you.

I will also support what others said about being organ donors. I have a donor's cornea, so I know I need to pay that forward, but everyone should if they can do so.

 

I agree with and wholeheartedly endorse that post from Junkie. Following health protocols before the transplant is critical to staying on the list; I can think of one deceased board member who wasn’t able to qualify for a needed transplant because his doctors didn’t believe he could stop drinking.

Good luck, and if you want to vent, hang out online, whatever … we’re here.

 

An update :
Returned back to the transplant division today..
More tests.
An outpatient procedure rewiring my defibilator (maybe this one will make me a walking wifi hotspot)
It goes on and on and on.....

 

And it will. Your job is to maintain an even strain and your hope, and endure all the fits and starts, the tests and the blood draws. Then one day you get the call and everything happens all at once.

 

Thinking of you, Dan. Hoping you get the call soon.