Beating Rejection

It’s taken us a bit to get to get around to blogging about it, but we recently had another hospital stay…

Friday August 26^th was Rachel’s 6^th month anniversary (“lungaversary” as I call it) of having her new lungs put in. She had to go to Hopkins for her 6 month bronchcoscopy where they were going to clean out any junk that might have been there and do a biopsy to test for any rejection. Last time she had a bronch she no rejection at all. She texted me at work to tell me that the doctors said that her lungs looked good and that she could head home.

After I got off work I met Rachel and her mom on their way home from Baltimore. I picked up Rachel and we went out to eat at the Mountain View Diner in Frederick to celebrate her 6 months with new lungs. Just after we ordered Rachel got a voicemail from a doctor at Hopkins, asking her to call back as soon as possible. Rachel left the table and walked outside to cal him back. My stomach hasn’t knotted up like that since we got the call that her new lungs were in. I sat in the booth and looked out the window to watch my wife start to cry while walking up and down the sidewalk talking to the doctor. I started playing out in my mind what their conversation could be, which is never a good idea. I couldn’t wait any longer, so I got up and walked toward her as she came in. She told me exactly what I was thinking the doctor told her: her body was starting to reject the lungs.

We sat back down to the table and she told me that the rejection was minor and in the early stages, but we still needed to get down to Hopkins that night for her to be put on steroids to stop her immune system from attacking her lung tissue. Our celebration dinner turned to a quick bite before heading out the door and driving straight down to Hopkins. At this point we had both been gone from the house since 7:30, Rachel had been in Baltimore all day already, and I had not yet gotten cleaned up from work. We couldn’t waste time going home though, so we left while making calls to our family letting them know what was going on.

Traffic wasn’t terrible, but of course it had to be raining the whole drive. I dropped Rachel off at the emergency room entrance at 8:30pm, parked the car, then walked to the ER to find her. When I got there, a nurse took me back to an isolation ER room where Rachel had a bed. Thank God for that. Ever been in the waiting room of an ER in Baltimore on a Friday night? Holy cow. It looked like the waiting room of death from Beetlejuice, only more ghetto. Rachel got the special room due to her high blood pressure and heart rate, plus the risk of germs from other patients. We sat and argued with staff about medical insurance procedures (we’re getting pretty good at it) and watched TV until we got a hospital room…four and a half hours later at 1am. Down in the ER they had started Rachel on her first dose of IV steroids…500mg of prednisone! To put this in perspective, when Rachel was really sick over a year ago, they bumped her up on steroids to a level that was unsafe to stay at for very long…that was 60mg. Her maintenance dose she was on after the transplant was a 50^th of what they dosed her with. The goal was to basically numb her body so it thinks that nothing is going on. That way her immune system would stop attacking the lungs, and then her doctors would take her back down on the steroids. 

This was the weekend that hurricane Irene hit the coast, so it was kind of nice to be in a sturdy building with plenty of backup generators. We actually slept pretty well the first night, as not too many nurses came in and out. I spent the entire next day with Rachel, who despite her body not wanting to have a major organ in it, was feeling pretty good. Her lung function wasn’t down much, she didn’t have a fever, and she wasn’t fatigued. She told me that she was only faking the rejection so I’d take off work on a Saturday and spend it with her, haha.

The next morning I left to head back to Hagerstown. Her mom came down in the afternoon to be with her. The doctors came in to meet with Rachel to explain a little more about exactly what had happened. Her immunosuppressant level had dropped and her immune system started to kick in and go after the lungs at a cell level. Her rejected was classified as A2 (the scale goes 0-5), meaning that the rejection was localized in her airways. Thanks to God having them find it during her bronch, we were able to get the steroids in her fast enough to stop the rejection before it caused any lasting damage.

Monday evening my Rachel came home after a whirlwind of a weekend. We can’t thank God enough for the timing of everything. Had she not had that bronch right after the rejection started, had the doctors not noticed the rejection quickly, and had we not still been near Hopkins when they called things may have not gone as well as they did.

Thanks for the continual prayers. Medicine, hospitals, and doctors are great, but it’s through God and prayer that we can make it through bouts like this. 

Psalm 107:28-30 Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed. Then they were glad that the waters were quiet, and he brought them to their desired haven.