Monday, November 23rd, I dropped a letter off at LifeSource for my donor’s mom. I wanted to be sure she received it before Thanksgiving. I have so much to be thankful for and I know at the holidays they have an empty seat at their table. There were five pages to the letter but I wanted to show you the last page. 
On the way home from LifeSource, I started to feel chilled. I had the seat warmers on high but couldn’t seem to get warmer. I came in the house and that is when the chills really got bad. I crawled into bed and could not stop shaking. When Travis came home he added another layer of blankets but nothing seemed to warm me up. My back muscles hurt so bad because of the uncontrollable shivers.
I took my temperature and it was elevated. I decided to call the transplant coordinator on call since it was now six at night. While waiting for a call back, we checked my temp again. Yikes, it was 102.4! The doctor called me back and told me with a temp that high I needed to head to the E.R. The decision was made around 1:00a.m. to admit me. My “Wordless Wednesday” photo when I was discharged was a little more chipper than this pic from Monday in the E.R.
Bundled under five warm blankets
I felt so bad for Travis, he had to go home and come all the way back to the hospital. I change my insulin pump every three days and unfortunately, I left the house feeling so terrible I didn’t think to bring a replacement. This is something the hospital can’t provide since they do not carry these supplies. So there was no other choice.
After he arrived back around three in the morning, I was still in the E.R. They still didn’t have a room ready for me. I finally got upstairs around 5:00 AM. If you haven’t stayed in a hospital before, they assess you, go over medications, etc before you can relax. After I was able to turn the lights off an hour later, I only had about another hour and a half before the army of doctors, nurses, and technicians began their day. I had a great nurse though that tried his hardest to allow me to rest.
By Wednesday, all the tests came back normal and my fever had broken. Luckily the virus went away as fast as it arrived. They sent me home to rest for a few days.
When I was in the emergency room, I thought back to how many scary trips we had made there with my old lungs. As they started wheeling me off in the bed, Travis said, “You’re going for an X-ray without oxygen!” I laid there rolling down the hallway starring up at the lights passing by on the ceiling and I started to tear up. I felt so awful with a horrible temperature and headache but I was breathing fine. Thank you Jacob for healthy lungs.
We postponed our family’s Thanksgiving until Saturday. Although, Travis took our niece Lauren to our family friends, The Marker’s, and brought home leftovers.
I will now back track to two weekends ago, the fun stuff. We met up on Friday with our friend Aimee. She was in town for her birthday until Monday and we were definitely going to spend some time with her.
Ben, Travis, Aimee, Jose, me, Kelly, & Katy
Saturday, before we headed to the annual Cystic Fibrosis Gala, we were glad we had a little extra time to stop by to say happy 40th birthday to our good friend, Reggie!
Kristina, Avery, Reggie, me, & Trav
The CF Gala was amazing as always. It is incredible to be in a room where in only a couple of hours a big difference is made for those living with cystic fibrosis. Over $800,000 dollars was raised which will all go towards research.
The next day, we met up with Aimee again so we could watch the border battle, Vikings vs. Packers. It didn’t end in our favor but it was great to spend time together before she left town.
Aimee, Dana, Nicole, me, & Lindsay
I’m not sure if you have seen the news about the Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado last week? The police officer that was shot and killed, Garrett Swasey, was a friend of mine. While I was living on the East Coast, training for figure skating, we trained together. I had not spoken to him in a number of years but he was always one of the nicest guys. Click on the link if you would like to read the nice article the US Figure Skating Association wrote about him. The world has lost a great police officer, pastor, and family man.
Nikki's New Lungs 