Wednesday 2/4/15
Many people have expressed their sadness over the cancellation of my possible transplant on the 24th. After some time to rest & process it all, I feel very fortunate to have experienced so many blessings through those 12 hours at the hospital. Let me recap & explain...
About 6pm on Friday evening (Jan 23), I got a call from my transplant coordinator @ Johns Hopkins saying that there was a possible match for me. She asked 2 questions: "how are you feeling?" (any colds/infections, etc.) I had just been thinking about how well I had felt for the few days prior to that. Her 2nd question was "how long would it take for you to get here, considering the current weather & forecast?" Thankfully, we live near I83 so we didn't feel the predicted weather would be a major deterrent for us. The roads were dry at the time that she called, but snow was on its way.
So, I said "what's next?" She said "just wait until the surgeon prompts me to call you." I, of course, tried to get more information: "approximately how soon might that be...1 hour...1 day?" She simply said that she didn't know. Back to the waiting game...
We prayed as a family & then Sara & Carly went back to whatever they were doing before the call. It wasn't that they didn't care...it was just that nothing was happening at the moment because we didn't know when we would be leaving. Meanwhile, Todd & I started processing through the list that was compiled a long time ago in preparation for this day. I prioritized what needed to be done & then my nervous evergy allowed me to do laundry, pay bills, cleaining & other things that weren't essential but filled my time & helped me in my "nesting mode." As the girls felt our busyness, they joined in--Sara really helped by prompting me with questions about things we may need with us or things that they needed to know about staying at home. Some of her questions we hadn't even thought about. They were asking some questions that we didn't have answers to, so we all just needed to trust God with this one.
After we felt that things were prepared, Todd & the girls went to sleep. Me--not so much. I was thankful that Todd could sleep because it was snowing outside & he would be driving us to the hospital. I was definitely tired--just coming off of a non-restful night. However, I just wasn't ready to sleep. I tried to quietly work around the house & finally I decided to read a book that a friend had just given me-- "Waiting on God". Seemed appropriate, don't you think?
That book by Charles Stanley has been helpful, even though I haven't read very far into it yet. I've been having some problems with comprehension (we were told that could be a side effect of the liver problems) so I usually only read a few pages & then let them sink in. The part I read that night was explaining how God is at work preparing the path for us. We can't always see HIm at work. I didn't know how that would surface & help me the following day.
I finally fell asleep a little after midnight & then we got another call from the transplant coordinator around 1:30am on Saturday morning. She said "how soon can you get here?" I told her that we needed to wait for someone to get here to stay with our girls. She asked us to arrive between 3-4am.
I'm going to stop here because I imagine it's getting long for you. I'll tell the rest of the story soon...
Thanks for the love & prayers--God's still preparing!
Belinda & Meg
