Duke Transplant Friends

I want to express my thoughts about my health, my heart and my circumstances.

To set the stage, I want you all to know what I know about the seriousness of this situation. A double lung transplant is a very, very complicated and risky surgery. Life expectancy after surgery is currently estimated to be 5 - 8 years and there is a 10% chance that I will not even survive the operation. Add open heart surgery, which requires me to be on a heart-bypass machine while my heart is stopped for repair. This operation, even when done alone, is filled with potential complications and when you add the two together during one procedure, the risks may be compounded. I understand that once we relocate to North Carolina, I may never return to Linkside Lane.

But this is not a note of doom and gloom. This is a praise to the Mighty God on High. For you see, God is sovereign. He is always faithful to us and frequently offers us trials in order to test our faithfulness to Him. Let me explain.

When Matthew and Allison were growing up, we had a small magnet sign on our refrigerator that simply said “BECAUSE I’M THE MOM, THAT’S WHY”. How many times have we said “no” to our children for reasons they were too young to understand? And yet, we did that, not to demonstrate our authority over them, but rather because we loved them and we wanted the best for them. But, as parents and authority figures, we cannot compare to the Creator of the Universe. So when the Lord places obstacles in our path, how can we question or doubt his motives? If we do, we are no wiser than our own little children who did not understand why their father said not to play in the street.

In the Seventh Chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says:
⁹You parents - if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead? ¹⁰Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not! ¹¹If you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him.

So, I am confident that this is God’s Will for my life right now. Whether I understand it or not. But, being the analytical type that I am, it did not take long for me to understand why God is working this way in my life. For you see, I do not make difficult decisions very easily. I will agonize and analyze and paralyze. It has been eight years since I was first listed for my lung transplant. I have put off transplant opportunities for over five years - living a modified lifestyle that I thought was perfectly acceptable. Sometimes, Diane and I will reflect on how little I actually do in a day because physically, I have become so incapacitated. And I have lived in that condition for several years.

But God has other plans - not only for me but for Diane as well. And He knows that in order to accomplish those plans, I need to be healthier. One way He could have motivated me to proceed with transplant is to allow my CF to flair-up and force the issue. This is how we always imagined it would happen - catch a cold, then pneumonia, be hospitalized with severely decreasing lung function, be on a ventilator, etc., etc. But such a compromised health condition would greatly decrease my chances for a successful recovery from a surgery as serious as transplantation.

Instead, God chose to introduce a heart condition into my life. One that is indeed urgent but not one that compromises my health with further pulmonary issues. A condition that would allow me to have a transplant while I am still in relatively “good” shape. A condition that would surpass any new lung allocation scheme. And a condition that could be identified and treated with a schedule that coincides with life at home and the end of Allison’s first year at college. Who could have thought of such good bad news!

So God knows exactly what He is doing - from the first revealing echocardiogram at UNC (which was not scheduled until just the day before my routine doctor visit) to the unsolicited transfer from UNC to Duke (which has become the world’s largest double lung transplant center and one of the few places in the nation that can perform a heart valve repair during transplant). Who’s in control here? Certainly not me. Duke has a huge pool of qualified cardiologists, so was it just a coincidence that the cardiologist who was in the cath lab the day I had my cardiac catheterization is one of the four at Duke that typically see the “unusual” cases such as mine? I don’t think so.

Praise God and watch. He is in control. Immediately before the verses in Matthew which I shared with you above, Jesus says:
⁷"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. ⁸For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

Please continue to pray for me and for my family. God answers the prayers of His saints and of those who seek him. I am optimistic about my surgery, anxious to be able to breathe again and very curious as to what God has in store for Diane and me after we finish this chapter.

To God be the Glory, forever and ever.

Amen.