Saying it out loud

I honestly see myself through a whole different perspective sometimes. I consider my life right now fairly "normal" my daily routines are similiar to a day in anyone else's life other than I take a handful of meds 2-3 times a day. But recently I have had to explain my 'limitations' to a Vocational Rehab worker.  I thought it would be easy for me to explain my 'life post transplant' and as we talked about it outloud it just hit me. . . I have a lot of issues still.

For example: I can easily say "well I just take my immune suppressants", but I also had to list all of the following, prednisone, Bactrim, blood pressure pills, blood thinner pills, crazy vitamin doses, and pancrease suppliment pills (whenever I eat something). . .that is a lot to take. On top of that I had to address things like constant back pain, frequent headaches, terrible insomnia and difficulty remembering things. Okay, those things are all easily remedied BUT  I had to really think of my day to day obstacles I then added: Borderline Diabetes (although I think I have the diagnosis, I just control my sugar levels without insulin), I have Anxiety, probably a bit of depression once in a while and who can forget the lovely tremors that Prograf causes! As I listed all of that and said it all out loud it shook me up a little. The most important issue we addressed of course was risk of infection and/or rejection. I feel like I am the healthiest person in the world, but on paper I look very sick :) Oh and on some of my paper work from the transplant center apparently I am also coded as having Liver or Kidney disease stage I or something like that. . . .really?

In reality I do feel like I have had an extraordinarily healthy 3 years post transplant. What very few complications I have had since my release after recovery is nothing short of a miracle.  I am not cured obviously by reading the long list of things in the above paragraph, but as far as I can tell it was one heck of an awesome trade off. Many of the day to day bothers like the headaches, tremors, frostbite fingers & toes, anxiety, depression, back pain, kidney functions, high blood pressure and even the high blood sugars are all probably just side effects of my list of medications . . . but I will take all of those over coughing up mucus & blood, being under weight, having no energy, suffocating to death, having to lug around oxygen everywhere I go, spending 1/2  of my life in a hospital room, but most of all having the fear of falling asleep cuz I was afraid I wouldn't wake up.

Getting a lung transplant was a trade off. One set of problems for a different set of problems and even though when I list all the little things I deal with now, it is a trade I would do over again in a heart beat. 

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