Remembering

Going through old emails. I got this one sept 13th...one month before she died.


Wellll....ok....I finally got my computer back today so I thought everybody just might wanna here from me. SOOOO many thanks to Mark and my mother who has been keeping the website updated for all. They've been so great in concidering the thousands of people across the world! I love you.
And now for the story:
"The Call" came at around 9:50 p.m. on August 29th, 2006. I was minding my own buisness, crouching about how a hurricane would've been nice to kill just the boredom of my life at this point. lol. so as I'm playing on the computer and chatting on AIM, my cell phone rings - I pick it up and my brains doesn't register as it sounds like a business caller after 9 p.m. she asks for "Hannah Pratt" again and very warely, I'm like" uuuhhh, yeah this is she. who's this." and then I got the completely unexpected response I wasn't expecting....lol. I scrambled through my house, barely able to control my head enough to remember that I should prbably tell my parents who's on the phone. it actually crossed my mind that maybe we shouldn't go because of the storm - but after 0.004149938576-14e seconds it was for sure were were going.
It was a quiet ride up to Gainesville until we we almost on I-95.....where the car I was riding in got a blowout. thank be to GOD that He gave us the forsight to take two cars, just my mom and I climbed into the trailing car and took off - feeling horrible about leaving our men stranded - we got to Shands about midnight on the dot.
from midnight until 6:00 a.m., myself, my dad, mom, brother, and good friend Tracy all sat in a room waiting. by the end of the 6 or so hours, Tracy and I were the only two awake. I'll be posting a couple pictures of the website when I can finally get the uploaded to my computer (in addition to not having the computer, I've had some tehcnial photo difficulties). anyways...at 6:30-ish Tracy got impatient and decided to go use her professional pull to find out what's going on. about 30 seconds later she came running back - THEY TOLD ME TO COME BACK!! IT'S A GO!! So I went into the OR at about 6:30. I didn't realize that the lungs wouldn't get there for another two hours. I'm glad I didn't know that since then I would've worried.
they took great care of me in the OR. thankfully I didn't have to go onto the heart/lung/bypass machine and minimal blood transfusion. obviously I rememeber absolutely NOTHING about this...and you should check out the wesbie for all that. the first thing I remember was waking up the ICU and my feet just wouldn't quit kicking - I acutallly ended up getting the nurse to yell at me tell me to calm down. OF COURSe I didn't because the feet kicking was my way of complaining that I had a severe lack of water , I had a tube down my throat, my hands were tied down, parents nowhere to be seen....and no propsperect of removal solving any of the above problems. I don't know how long it took until even my parents were allowed into see me, but it forever if FELT like from my point of view - probably why the nurse continually lost her temper for the all feetkicking.
After lung transplant, there are 4 total chest tubes that have to stay in to drain all the fluid around the lung capacity. On Friday, Dr. Baz pulled two of my chest tubes, the ventilator tube and kidney tube out. at that point - I was excited - got really happy and in my own igorance figured I'd was home free. (those of you that have been through transplant can just stop laughing at me right now...I am definitely now laughing at myself. HA!)
Shows just how much I know - it's been 2 weeks total and the surprises just keep on coming. I've had 3 bronchs (one the Friday after, one on the Monday after and one yesterday). The first bronch was just to suction out old surgery stuff and was yetesterday's bronch. The Monday bronch was to look for rejection - and so far no rejection!! Thank God!! The remaining chest tubes were cleaned out yesterday and it was discovered that the reason they had stopped draining was because of clots near the top of the tubes. After a good cleaning, the chest tubes are flowing freely again - taking away all the old junk that comes with the mess of post surgery care. They'll keep on trucking untill they decide they're done. Same with the oyxgen. I've been weaned down to barely walking on the treadmill at 0.6 mph for 3 reps - but with 3 1/2 liters of oyxgen instead of 5. It's VERY hard and there are times I just flop down after barely 2 minutes, but I'm doing it. My resting oxgen has come down to 2 1/2 liters from 3 too!
Other comlications I've had were severe abdominal pains for about 4 days. Unable to eat, drink or hardly move she spend the first of "recovery" suffering from medication and post-surgical side effects. I was so thankful it was a prettty common side effect but just took a little more time and energy to fix me than it has other people - nothing majorly problematic though. My stomach is now doing much better.
The other HUGE side effect I went through actually sort of blew up in my face last night. It would hilarious if it didn't have the potential to have been so dangerous. I think I litereally lost my mind. lol. SeriouslY people! I spent all night thinking I was at a party with some very close friends, family and the doctors - 8 hours with all the party energy and no sleep to show for it. What made it worse was that no matter what my dad said, he couldn't convince me there was no body here. It wasn't like I was dancing or anything....in fact I was very irritated that nobody would come jump out and yell surprise, or that they insisted on tying me to the bed, or that they whispered just behind me all night and stuck bucks in a bed I couldn't get out of it. This is the way most of the night went - a little bit of meaness, a little bit of laughing, a little bit of sleep, and me finally snapping at my dad because I just KNEW that there was somebody typing me up. The official cause of this extreme hallucination hasn't been determined, but the high and frequent doses of pain meds immediatley after surgery is the most likely culpriate. With yesterday's bronch, I took a little bit of pain mediciation, but other than that I haven't had any for over 48 hours. The chest tubes are stiff but much more liveable that those recently experienced side effects. Blood lab work will also continue to be taken to adjust the medication to the right dosages.
And that....ladies and gents...brings us VERY QUICKLY up to speed. if you have question please email me, msypace me, AIM me....but understand that can't get back immediately. You can also continue to catch updates at http://www.hannahpratt.com or jonnahproject@juno.com. THank you for all your prayers and support. This is a journey that is like no other and in it's own hugeness it can be daunting - but it's that daunt that creates the beatuy.
Love, Hannah and "Earnesto"