First things first, Saturday I celebrated 3 years with my new new lungs!!! I've done quite a bit of googling about the survival stats for redo lung transplants, and the average seems about 3 years. Needless to say it's not GREAT, and reaching 3 years without any rejection so far is amazing. Feeling super blessed and lucky, and I appreciate the easy breathing every day!
Then, I've finally been able to have two awesome mini-breaks in the past 6 weeks. At the end of Sept I went to Mabalingwe with some friends. We had an amazing long-weekend in the bush. The weather was good, we got some good doses of covid-fighting Vit D. Thank you summer! It was SO GOOD for the soul to be away with friends. Listening to music, eating too much, going on game drives, drinking gin and tonic, soaking up with sun. One of the highlights of the year. Especially after the cancer scare I had the week before.
The second break was a long-weekend to Umdloti in KZN. I badly needed to see the sea, it's been 2.5 years! We had the best time, especially the snorkelling! Just amazing. Wish we could have stayed longer.
Then lastly... I'm getting a hysterectomy on the 16th of this month. My cervix has been the bane of my existence since my first transplant. 13 Years of immunosuppressants come at a price. I've had problems with abnormal pre-cancerous cells since 2009. They have been burnt off and cut out in theatre and in the Dr's rooms many many times. But now there is literally almost no cervix left to be able to do that. And there are highly abnormal cells once again. So my uterus and cervix are coming out. We're hoping to keep the ovaries, and I've been having blood tests done to try and determine if we can leave them. I really really hope so. I do NOT particularly want to go into menopause.
My gynae has been amazing, and the op will be done laproscopically at my transplant hospital, where they don't normally do gynae procedures. Two Drs, all their equipment and a nurse will come for the op. My transplant anesthetist (and favourite vein whisperer) will be the anesthetist on the day. And my transplant surgeon and lung physician has also helped to arrange the theatre time and admin behind all of it. I feel SUPER special! And very relieved that it will be done with the team of people I know and who know ME inside and out! If all goes well I will spend one night in ICU and go home the next day.
The Dr who will be performing the surgery laproscopically is not my usual gynae (she will also be there though), and I'm meeting her on Thursday. As of today I have also stopped my one immune suppressant, Certican/Everolimus, as it delays wound healing, and massively increased my dose of Cyclosporin/Neoral, to optimise healing afterwards. Next week I need to have blood tests done to make sure the adjusted doses are right. I guess I can't claim I'm low maintenance......
I'm very very relieved to have a date for this and that it's finally happening. It's been hanging over my head for years. At one point about 4 years ago a hysterectomy was also very much on the table, but my lungs were not in very good shape. There were talks of doing it with a spinal block while I'm awake. But my Dr was able to cauterize the abnormal cells off, and since then by some miracle it's been OK for a bit. However now my lungs are in tip top shape, so it's time.
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