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.
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