Hard

Well, I'm here.  In ICU.  With a needle in my neck and tube running through my artery to my heart.  Swallowing hurts a little, and I'm tired.  This is the beginning of waiting for a heart transplant.

Here's the plan as best as I can communicate it:

The goal right now is to get me to the tippy top of the list of transplant candidates as quickly as possible with the hope I can get a transplant as soon as possible.  This is the reason that I'm in ICU.  My doctor (who is pretty awesome, and I'm blessed to have him) explained that it's like saving up money in a bank to buy a new car, except instead of money we're saving up time in the ICU to provide leeway when it comes to getting a transplant, and it's almost like a national competition.  Everyone wants the transplant, and we're all dying to get it first.  Not sure if there's a pun there.  Ultimately, they say that youth is on my side.  The fact that I am one of the younger candidates gives me an advantage on how soon I get the transplant because it's supposedly easier to find a heart for me than for someone who is seventy and pushing through their last leg of life.

Another new fact I learned today is that when I've been here for a week, they will evaluate my status, and based on that evaluation, there is a chance they'll send me home with an IV heart pump.  So, who knows how long I'll be here and how many times I'll go in and out of the hospital between now and the transplant.

ANOTHER new fact I learned today is that when they find a heart, I am immediately rushed to surgery and prepped for the arrival of the heart.  There's no advanced notice or anything, so it will be impossible for me to tell anyone when it's going down before it happens.  They said that one team goes to harvest the heart, and the other team preps me for the transplant, which translates in my mind like this: "We're going wake you up in the middle of the night, run you to the surgery room, put you into a deep sleep, and open up your chest cavity while we wait for the heart to arrive."  All in all the procedure can take up to six hours.  Now, we all know how transplants happen.  Hooray!

Today, I couldn't stop saying to myself, "This is going to be hard."  It is going to be hard, and I've known that throughout my entire experience with this whole thing.  Having a weak heart just makes everything harder.  I'm struggling to find the encouragement I need in the God who has strength beyond comparison, who possesses the power to raise Christ from the dead and has made that same power available to those who love Him, and who has blessed me with immeasurable mercy and grace to endure my suffering and my weaknesses.  Sometimes, it's just hard.