Monday was my six month check-up with the transplant clinic at Stanford (Friday’s my actual half-year transplantiversary) and, all in all, it went pretty well. Lung function was up to 71% — a number I haven’t seen since high school, at least — and everyone said everything else was looking good. The only possible hitch would be if the biopsy results from the bronchoscopy showed something, but what were the odds of that?
Pretty good, apparently.
On Tuesday, as Monica and I were eating breakfast and getting ready to go to the airport, I got a call from Stanford saying that the biopsy was showing A2 rejection — which, while not terrible (I think the grading goes to A4 and then anything above that is generally labelled as Holy Shit Get Into The Hospital Now), it definitely isn’t good, and is actually worse than the last rejection that shanghaied me in the hospital for a week last October. Frustratingly enough, everything else is better — weight and lung function are up, activity’s good, there’s no fluid in my lungs this time, my hair looks great — and I still feel pretty fucking phenomenal, but that doesn’t count for nearly as much as what’s going on on a cellular level.
On the plus side, I still got on the plane and came home and I’m not being admitted into any hospital. Instead, they’re just recommending the standard procedure of three days of intravenous steroids which should be enough to kick the rejection square in the nuts. I have to go back to Stanford in a month to have another bronchoscopy to be sure. That kind of sucks because we weren’t anywhere near budgeted for another trip that soon, but, hey, that’s what credit cards are for, right?
The really shitty part is actually the bonus round of GI tests they want me to undergo. For at least the third time in my life I’ll get to eat radioactive eggs while being x-rayed. Fun times. There’s also some other test that involves a tube being placed through my nose and down my throat for 24 hours to measure… something, I don’t know. The overall goal is to make sure I’m not secretly aspirating air into places air doesn’t belong, which, you know, I get. I’d like to make sure that’s not happening too. But the combination of tubes and my nose/throat tends to involve lots of vomiting on my part and lots of ruined shoes on the doctors’ part, so I’m not exactly thrilled.
But, you know, whatever. Shit happens. And even the worst of it is a hell of a lot better than dying.
Anyway, here’s some other stuff that’s happening:
— a review of the original Exponential Apocalypse
— second place in the first Bizarro Pulp Press short fiction contest
— Monica’s friend is walking from Brooklyn to Nutley to raise funds for our ongoing expenses
— because, seriously, this transplant shit is stupid expensive and every little change in the plan is more money we don’t have, so if you could help, even a little, we would super appreciate it