Livin' la vida loca

It's been crazy! A good crazy. Here is an update...

For the record - Greg (my brother in-law) and Emily (one of my BF's) received their Snickers bar as a prize for guessing the July 1st transplant date.

Cooking - I've been working through my Make Ahead cookbook (steering clear of the dessert section!) and will post my recipes soon.

A special email - Ina Garten emailed me. Yup. My initial reaction was total panic. I thought I was going to get in trouble for posting recipes on the blog but it was just an incredibly nice message. Ina's message said that she learned that I was blogging about Make Ahead (my friend contacted her - how nice?!) and how I've been through a challenging time. She wished me luck with my blog. The email came from a simple email address that I couldn't find anywhere on her site and there wasn't any fancy signature line - just xxx Ina. I think it's legit. Even if it was her team that wrote it I'm going to believe it was her. Like the time my parents went to a Boston Celtics game when I was a child and they brought my pendant for the players to sign. I was ecstatic when they returned with autographs of my favorite players. I almost died of happiness. Years later I learned it was really my Dad's John Hancock...but I wouldn't have changed a thing.

Lady heart friends- I've been able to connect with a few ladies in their 30's who have had a very different and much harder journey than I, but are still waiting on a heart. One is seen at Tufts and the other at Brigham & Women's. I mentioned a while back that it's tough to find young females going through this and it has been really nice to finally connect with someone who understands what you are going through. We may try to establish a support group so other young patients can feel connected.

Recovery - So a cracked sternum takes forever to heal! I'm not really in pain but still can't sleep well and on busy days my back and chest get achy. I get headaches and sometimes migraines at night and my shaky hands haven't really calmed down all that much. It's all minor and I'm trying to patiently wait until at least the 6 month mark when some meds are taken off my list. Hopefully it gets better.

I was at the hospital yesterday for my biopsy. My first few biopsy results were a 1A and my last two resulted in zero rejection. Yay!

Nursing the nurses - The staff who took care of me on Pratt 8 are amazing. Amazing. The level of care they took and the knowledge they have is remarkable. They all had such positive attitudes that allowed me to stay relatively sane while my mobility and quality of life was impaired. I'm sure they would have loved a tray of cookies or flowers but I wanted to say thank you in a way that showed how much I really did appreciate them. Since I basically lived with them knew their day to day. They move. A lot. Whether it's bending to get a blood pressure reading, pushing an entire bed or lifting a patient they've gotta be in pain at the end of a twelve hour shift.

So I thought I'd make them a hot/cold pack!

I'm terrible at arts and crafts so I asked my talented and very patient aunt to help create the little bundles. I tried to select patterns for nurses that I knew better to personalize them as much as I could. We worked pretty hard on these for a few weeks and I'm so happy with them. I was also excited to use my wheelchair for something other than me - to tote these heavy corn bags! I had to buy two 50 pound bags of feed corn.

I got a call yesterday about my biopsy results and the nurse told me she had already used it. She said it smelled great (we put lavender in the mix) and she fell asleep with it on. Mission accomplished!!!