Two Year Heartiversary!

I had told myself to post an update yesterday, Patrick's 2 year anniversary with the new heart, and found my motivation to do so lacking. I have been busy preparing the shop for the summer season when tourists from around the world will wander in and hopefully purchase one of Patrick's knives, or a piece of my art. My mind has been elsewhere.

In truth, I feel like the 2 year anniversary is March 30th rather than the 31st. It was that day that I spoke to Patrick for the last time, not knowing if he was going to survive the operation. They began the procedure at about 9 or 10pm Seattle time. This, to me, means the anniversary is the 31st.

But the team in Seattle says it is when the surgery is finished successfully, so that's the official date. That span of time surrounding the weeks prior and the months following are all just a blur to me.

What truly matters is the last two years and what a blessing the new heart has been to us.

Patrick has lived up to his promise. He helps everyone, every chance he gets. He jumps in when his family needs him. He volunteers every Sunday at church for anything they might need - ushering, passing out Communion plates, putting away chairs, and whatever else they might need. Patrick is the guy most called upon in the Co-Op Plaza when there is an altercation, an individual stuck in their addiction and semi-conscious, or a shoplifter who needs to be escorted out of the building. In this way he helps our own shop and that of our fellow shop owners.

Patrick also helps the community when he can. He has taken donations for seniors and utilized funds, time, and effort to help the elderly in our community when they have perhaps been forgotten. He has selflessly helped to clear out a hoarded house after simply being asked to do it. He has towed strangers out of the ditch, cleared driveways for those who can't do it themselves, given rides to stranded tourists, and bought coffees and crepes for countless friends and random wanderers who happen by the shop on any given day.

He has big plans, too. We both do. We would love to hold a marriage group in our living room, helping other couples weather storms that we have already survived. We would like to pursue avenues of charitable giving of our time and resources, and possibly one day have the means to pursue more philanthropic causes. Patrick also has a gift for helping individuals who find themselves trapped in addictions, for encouraging incarcerated people, and for helping recovering addicts get back on their feet.

In short, we have an abundant plan for how to give back to the universe what the universe has gifted to us.

If you're local, we would love it if you would stop by the shop this Friday during the Co-Op Plaza's First Friday event, and say hello to Patrick and our family. We will be there from 4pm until 7pm, honoring sweet Andrew's gift and celebrating fourteen years as the local knife shop in the Co-Op Plaza. (That anniversary is in fact today - April 1st).

And if you can't make it Friday, well, we'll run into you locals at some point. This is Interior Alaska, and we all know someone who knows someone. And Patrick talks to EVERYONE. Lord, can he talk.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, our gratefulness for your support, your generosity, your love, and your kindness knows no bounds. Locals, and those of you who follow us from afar - we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Strangers have become friends, and friends have become family. Heck, a handful of you strangers have become family! And we wouldn't have it any other way. To say you have shaped our lives, and our family, is an understatement. We can no more tell the story of our family without the indelible imprint all of you have made on it, than we could deny the enormity of Andrew's sacrifice.

So, on this two year anniversary of said sacrifice, thank you. Thank you, Andrew. And thank you, wonderful followers, friends, and family. We love you.

Update & More

I have good news and disappointing news.

The good news is that Patrick feels better most of the time. At one point a few days ago he said he felt 75% better, but tends to sit around the 40% level. This is good. He is slowly recovering. He can walk up stairs without being completely winded, although he can certainly tell that physical activity is harder than it used to be (and he knows when to save his energy for *ahem* important tasks).

He had a checkup in Seattle on Thursday and that's where the disappointing news comes in. They did a repeat chest x-ray and found that his pleural effusion has doubled in size. I don't have a copy of his October x-ray, although I wish I did for comparison's sake. But this is what his December x-ray looked like.

For comparison's sake, this is what he looks like with no pleural effusion. This x-ray is from February of this year, and you can see the difference below his right lung:

See that stunning wire work around his sternum? I will never fail to be impressed by how tightly the transplant surgeon managed to get them. He never felt his sternum crunch and slide together this time - not even once. After his 2007 bypass it was a nightmare. I still don't know what the difference was, besides the two different surgeons.

So Patrick will have the thoracentesis procedure done with a CT scan at the Fairbanks Memorial Hospital Imaging Center. Am I nervous about that? Absolutely. But complications are rare and Patrick is strong.

Now, for giggles, here is an x-ray from March 30, 2023, ten days before the start of his transplant surgery. It shows his pacemaker in amazing detail!

I think it's fascinating how it shows where is pacemaker leads are placed, and where they hooked up to his old heart. This pacemaker/defibrillator was Patrick's implanted paramedic team for 18 years. We relied on it to keep his heart beating evenly, and to bring him back from the brink of death when his heart was ready to quit. I lost count of how many "widow-maker" events he had. I lost count of 911 calls. I lost count of how many shocks he received from the defibrillator, and of how many times I held him while he waited for the shocks to finally work and pass.

I am not sad to see the pacemaker missing from the newer x-rays.

Back to those x-rays - what's interesting is he has 10 wires looped around his sternum from his bypass, and only 7 from the transplant. Maybe the quality of wire has improved?

We have access to the portal where we can view all CT scans with and without contrast, arterial scans, angiograms, and ultrasounds he has had through UW. They are FASCINATING. I browsed for nearly an hour when we found it in his chart, imagining how neat it would be to know exactly what I'm looking at, the signifance of the colors on the scans, what the shadows mean, exactly how healthy the arteries and veins in his brain are, or why his new heart looks similar in size to the old one. These are thoughts that will never be fleshed out, and questions that will never be answered.

But on the flip side, I have him. I felt encouragingly grateful the other day to have a husband next to me, making what Samuel dubbed last summer as "pig noises." It could be worse. He could be dead. I could be making plans for what to do with his things, how to donate his clothes, how to raise kids without him.

I did tell him a couple days ago that if he had died I would have traded in our king sized bed for a full sized mattress so I could create a reading nook in the bedroom. He cracked a joke about how crass it is to make plans like that when he's still here, but he knows. He really does understand.

I would encourage you to have those thoughts. Imagine those plans. And have those thoughts and plans for your family, as well. Our days are numbered, and when we find ourselves on the other side of kids, grandkids, careers, relationships - whenever our final day decides to show up - both we and our loved ones will be grateful. Because it could be tomorrow, or it could be sometime around 2075. We just don't know.

These are tough conversations to be had, for sure. But have them. We do, with each other and with our kids. It might not soften the blow of losing a loved one, but it will smooth the struggle after their passing, at least a little bit.

Or at least, for the love of God, write a will. Sign it. Tell people. File it with the court. Do your family a favor and help prepare them.

In the meantime, live your life. We are. We welcomed a lovely little addition to our family last month named Olive, and she has brightened our days immeasurably. I have reminded Patrick to wash his hands at least a thousand times since we got her.

Stay The Course

Just a little update for you guys.

Patrick is doing better. Yesterday he said he felt 20% better, but then last night he attempted to use his c-pap and it set him back. Now we know he can't use it until his lung issues are completely healed.

It was a rough night, and I'm exhausted.

The good news is we finally got his antibody testing back, and his level of DSA is 1,500, which is going in the right direction! He won't need another infusion, thank God.

As of right now we are to stay the course, and to focus on getting him rest and healing. He has his ups and downs, but if his recovery were a line graph it would have a definite upward trend.

Those dips, though... Damn.

Keep us in your thoughts and prayers, and keep sending those positive vibes!