update on my mom's new lungs

from about 8PM Friday night until after 4AM Saturday morning a team of surgeons took out every little piece of my Mom's old diseased lungs. The doctors said the old lungs were so bad and diseased (they used the word "friable") that when they just touched them they crumbled to pieces and fell apart. so they had to spend hours just making sure they scraped out every little piece of the old diseased lungs so there wouldn't be anything left to corrupt the good ones...
then they transplanted these 2 life giving lungs in their place and put her back together.

it was crazy hard waiting all night to hear something! my Dad didn't sleep at all... just waiting. hard to sit and wonder if things are going well or not. i remember just kind of pacing... wondering when we would hear.

but the tranpslant was a success! my Mom has finally received the perfectly matching pair of lungs.
so for that we celebrate! finally my Mom is rid of those lungs that have plagued her for a lifetime. she has a chance to start over. thanks to God. we've trusted Him for this & He gets thanks and glory from us for this.

I do feel kind of a tension between wanting to celebrate fully - that "YES! it's finally over & everything is good" kind of celebration
VS.
still not being totally out of the woods yet.

not sure if that makes any sense to anyone? it feels like i exhaled a little but i'm still holding my breath a little at the same time.

i walked in to see her after the transplant and it was a little shocking. she must have been hooked up to about 800 different tubes and machines running all up and down her body. A Ventilator running into her mouth + blood draining out everywhere. she is swolen all over. her hands and head for example seem to be TWICE their normal size.
i've seriously never seen anyone hooked up to so much stuff. tough to see my Mom this way.

so it seems a little too early to say whether everything will all go perfect or not. so i want to celebrate this huge step and I DO celebrate it. i'm pumped. but still kind of just waiting to see if she can come through all this.

How is she doing?

great Q :)  i'm a big picture guy so i don't remember all the details the doctors and nurses are telling us. so, if you're a detail person, i apologize. you should probably talk to my wife or Dad... they can tell you all the fancy terms and technical stuff... here's the big pic:

she looked and was doing not all that great Saturday. but later in the day around 5 or 6pm she made a massive turnaround. all her stats came up a lot and she woke up for about 5 minutes. That's when my Dad and I got to talk to her. we told her we loved her & she had some new lungs :)

she smiled - as best as she could with tubes coming out of her mouth.

we told her about all these tons and tons of friends and people like YOU praying for her.

i told her that Keira started giggling this week and showed her a pic Crystal had just texted me of Keira giggling. she smiled really big then!

i think she was feeling pretty good at that point. (she ought to be - she's getting the good stuff.) she could squeeze our hands, wiggle her feet, and shake her head.

she went downhill today. her stats were back down. she'll probably stay in ICU a while. her new lungs aren't really working yet. right now they kicked us out of her room so they can hook up a balloon pump to her heart. it's gonna pump the blood for her heart i guess. soon they're going to give her an epidural for pain once she stabilizes a little. right now they're having to keep her sedated. they say it's much more painful than open heart surgery.

the best i can tell = she's not necessarily doing "bad" but not really "good" either. there is no "normal" when it comes to double lung transplants. we're just being patient.

feels like we're just waiting again. waiting for her to improve.

but all these doctors and experts said that my Mom should not have been alive for these last 10 years. these diseases should have killed her 10 years ago. and now they're gone. along with those old worn out lungs...

so we're hopeful.
we have One Hope. the God who knows what's up. the God who keeps all our lungs working every second of every day and has kept my Mom alive all these years. the God who holds this big spinning ball of dirt together we call home...

He is our hope.