Believe
If you are looking for the most positive Christmas story, miracle, or whatever you want to refer to as what is happening today, you are going to read it here…NOW!
Jessica is headed home today! That’s right, if you have been following the last several posts about her, less than two weeks since her miraculous heart transplant, resulting from a massive heart attack more than seven weeks ago, she is being released from the hospital.
The story is so unbelievable, so many things against her survival. I know, because like Jessica, I and many of my fellow long term Hodgkin’s survivors share the same complicated health histories. When we first found out that she had the heart attack, and subsequently learned that the event actually lasted over twenty-four hours before an ambulance had to be called, all we could do is see the updates about the efforts to save her life. And by save her life, that is, multiple times.
While Jessica had a lot against her, which I will go into in a moment, she had some things clearly in her favor. She is a physical fitness trainer and rehab specialist, clearly in good physical conditioning. And her age, being a gentleman, I will not say her age, just that she is younger than me, to be clear, I consider myself young.
But yes, she had a lot against her with her health. Her heart history was not as colorful as mine, but she had a prior heart surgery, along with her multiple bouts with several cancers. A common issue amongst us as Hodgkin’s Lymphoma survivors, is complications from our treatments of high dose radiation or toxic chemotherapy. Jessica was no exception.
Once Jessica had been considered stable enough, the news came, she would need a heart transplant in order to live independently. Let me put this in perspective for you. In my thirty-three years of remission, and the hundreds of survivors that I have come across and met, I knew of no one, no one who had ever had a heart transplant, or even qualified for one. In recent years, a few survivors had come close, but passed before the opportunity became possible.
Jessica’s situation was serious, and with a transplant her only option, her fellow survivors knowing the odds of that happening, all we could do is wait. Then news came, she not only qualified, but they had found a donor.
In my years of following other survivors and their surgeries, I am all too familiar with the complications that can arise from fluid in the lungs, infections, and worse from lesser surgeries. In a good number of surgeries, this was the case. And we would expect the same for Jessica as far as concern. But guess what? Except for a few rough moments in the beginning, her recuperation went only forward in progress. I will spare the graphic details, but long story short, it brings us to today, Jessica is going home!
She no doubt has a long road ahead of her, medications, rehab, and of course emotional care. Oddly, this is one area that I have no experience in because I have never seen this moment before. But this is a moment, that I and many other survivors will build on for the future. Just like all the progress that has been made in treating Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and dealing with our survivorship issues, we seem to now have someone, and answers of where to turn to, when and if we ever have to face the prospect of a heart transplant ourselves. Jessica is showing it can be done, and perhaps, maybe should be more seriously considered for our survivors in the future.
Honestly, this is such a great story, and Jessica is a writer herself. And from what she has told me, she has one helluva story to write.
Paul's Heart 