Chutes & Ladders

After a relaxing few days at the Durham house and some solid progress in rehab, Pop is unfortunately back in the hospital for a bit. On Thursday he had stitches removed from the area where his last chest tube was inserted, and overnight Thursday night that section of his chest sprung a leak! The transplant team recommended he come in on Friday for a CT scan to see what was up. The CT did show some possible signs of infection behind his sternum. Even though Pop was not showing other signs of infection (e.g., elevated white blood cell count, fever, etc), he is taking so many immunosuppressants that the only way his doctors could truly rule out infection was to look at his sternum a bit more directly. So, Pop was back in surgery today.

The surgeons didn’t see anything particularly concerning, but they are taking cultures of the fluid that continues to drain from around Pop’s lungs and the also area around his sternum that looked questionable on the CT. It’s takes bacteria a few days to grow in the lab, so we won’t have conclusive results regarding infection for another couple of days.

While this is a set back in terms of the rehab schedule, at this stage in Pop’s recovery, his medical team has to take maximum precautions because the susceptibility to infection is so high. Before today’s surgery, he texted Molly and me, “This setback feels like the game of Chutes & Ladders! I was on the home stretch and hit the chute back to the middle of the board. Nothing to do but lean into it.”

Here’s hoping that his slide landed him right next to that big ladder that lets you quickly makes up for any lost time! However, as Molly and I keep repeating to each other, there is no such thing as a complication-free double-lung transplant! Ups and downs just have have to be chalked up to the nature of the game.