SNAFU

I struggled with how to make this post, what the title should be, what the attitude should be. I simply have nothing except to be straightforward as my doctors were with me.

The transplant did not work. That's it. I went down on monday for the follow up biopsy I last talked about. I had the procedure that afternoon. It was called an open lung wedge biopsy. They sugar-coated this a bit. I was and still am in some serious pain. They went in the chest wall and took actual tissue samples of the lungs. I woke up with a few more ivs in place, an arterial line, and 3 holes in my right chest, one was a huge chest tube. Not like transplant, but close.

Finally Dr. Haithcock (my surgeon), Dr. Pedar Noone (the head of the transplant program), and Becky Cicale (my transplant coordinator), came into my room thursday around noon and sat me down.

They were very shocked and disheartened to report that the results were very conclusive and I was in advanced stages of chronic rejection better known as BOS or Brochilitis Obliterans Syndrome. Basically, my smaller airways are completely obliterated, scarred, fibrous, and tearing themselves apart. Thus the rapid need for oxygen and the ability to never feel as though I could breathe, or my breathing was getting better.

Given how rapidly it onset, how progressive it was, the unknown of how it happened, there is no viable treatment option at all. The only possible scenario would be for a second transplant. The pathology was that bad.

It was sad to hear this, but in a way I knew.

We are exploring our options now and thinking things through. I want to keep that thought process for another post. It is almost impossible to grasp the idea of doing this again, although re-transplant is not taken lightly and the fact that they would even say I am a candidate is a good thing. It is a bit more difficult, but they feel my age, newness out of surgery, and case history among other things make me a good candidate. But there are simply no answers to why this happened, when it started, and why it happened so rapidly.

Which brings me to my title. I remember one story when I first started working in OT, I was working in some nursing home and this old man was rambling about how he just had another diagnosis of cancer and was going to die soon. He was a WWII Vet. And he looked at me and said, "this is just a SNAFU". "You know what that means, kid" And I begin to describe to him the actual definition of what I thought it meant, ie. it means you hit a little road block.blah blah blah, and he cuts me off and goes, "NO God Damnit. It means Situation Normal: All Fucked Up!" I had no clue..You learn something everyday.

Thats what this news is one giant SNAFU.....

-Mitch