Day 3, Tuesday, January 18/11

    

""Life, It may not always be easy,
   But it will always be worth it."" 
       
   

Our hotel, I loved looking out our window at night to see the city lights.

It was beautiful.

It was situated fairly close to the hospital. Just a short taxi drive which cost between $7.00- $8.00 a trip, depending on traffic. Taxi's in Toronto start their fares at $4.95.

This wasn't our room, but our bed looked exactly like this one.  Is it any wonder why Alan had such a hard time getting me up every morning. Hee-hee! The most comfortable bed I've ever slept in!

This picture is of part of the lobby and you can see into the restaurant. The only problem with our hotel was that they have this beautiful restaurant but it was only open for breakfast.  It left us to fend for ourselves for supper, which would have been fine, except that we were exhausted after my appointments at the hospital all day.

We had a little more time to sleep in this morning as my first appointment wasn't until 8:45. However it cost us over $11.00 for our taxi this morning. The OPP officer who was killed in the line of duty, his memorial is this afternoon and they are already starting to close of the streets for the parade.

My 2D Echo (Echo-cardiogram)  was at the Peter Munk Cardiac Center on the 3rd floor of the Toronto General. This is an ultrasound of the heart. It will tell them how well my heart pumps the blood. It also looks at the valves which separate the chambers to see how well they open and close. I was a little concerned taking this test as I had one done 6 months ago on the Island and it didn't turn out.

My 10:00 appointment is back up on the 12 th floor for my 6 minute walk test. Here, they want me to walk at my own pace for 6 min, rest for 20 min and walk for another 6 min.  I set out hauling my oxygen in a cart behind me and I only make it a little over 3 min. I rested for 20 min and started over again but this time with a tank of free flow oxygen (instead of my pulse tank)  in a cart behind me. This made it a little easier this time I made it about 4.5 min. Not so good and my time is up for the day.  I will have to come back another day, later in the week for more testing.

We were on the run to our next appointment when Melissa McPhail tracked us down. Melissa is another Islander who just received new lungs in November. She looks fantastic, very beautiful, strong and healthy. Actually, she ran down a flight of stairs to find us when she realized, I was another Islander lol. Since we were out of time, we decided to meet for lunch later in the week.

Next appointment was at 11:00 on the 10th floor,  Pulmonary functions tests. While I was doing these breathing tests my husband is in the waiting room with a bird's eye view (looking out the 10th floor window) straight down to the street below where  the memorial parade for the fallen OPP officer is going by. Lucky man,  he gets to watch this as I a get to have a needle injected into my wrist for an arterial blood gas test. Yipee, hurts like HELL, but it's a necessary evil, as it checks my oxygen level in my blood.

At 12:30  We report to Medical Imaging on the 1st floor for my CT Chest/CAT Scan. I get to have a little rest while the scanner takes a series of pictures of my lungs.

My last appointment of the day was my physical exam with Susan Cherneko.  I was taking my second step into her office and she's asking me how long have I had Scoliosis?  Wow, my posture is something that I have been battling since puberty, memories of being 10 years old and my mother and teachers telling me to straighten up. Never, has anyone including doctors ever mentioned scoliosis. I told her this and she would check better after my other tests were done. She then very thoroughly checked my heart, lungs, abdomen, head, neck and extremities. Then she checked my back and sure enough there is a slight curvature on my upper right side of my back.  Now that the team knows about this curvature they will take this into account in how to make me more comfortable during my 10 hour transplant surgery. After the examination was all finished we sat and discussed the test results which are back already. No problems so far, because of the size of my lungs and the type of my blood are all normal. This time " Normal:" is a good thing because I would make an excellent  candidate for transplant.  Yipee.  Fingers are crossed that the later results will be as good as the earlier results.

Back to our hotel, for some rest and then to find supper and later some phone calls. Tomorrow we get to do it all again!!
  

Day Two, Monday, Jan17/11

Carry me to the shore, bury me in the sand

Walk me across the water, And maybe you'll understand

                           Hollow Years ~ Dream Theater 

Here it is in all it's glory the Toronto General Hospital
affectionately called, "The General" by the doctors, staff and patients. I've waited eight months and I'm finally here, but unfortunately only for a week. It is beautiful though all 12 floors that stretch for a whole downtown city block.  Flanked on the west by University Ave, and on the east by Elizabeth St and borders College St to the north and Gerrard St. West on the south. In the Discovery District of downtown Toronto.

 We started out bright and early (actually it was still dark) flagged a cab and landed at the hospital by 7:10am.  We started out on the 12th floor at the Transplant Patient Assessment Center.  Here we found out what was expected of both my husband and myself. Plus an over all view of how things will run this week.

Off we went to our next appointment a Bone Density test on the seventh floor.  As it turned out the technician doing this scan was delayed in traffic and late for work, so while sitting waiting, we started talking to the other people in the waiting room and as it turns out they to are hopeful lung recipients, just like me, all together three other ladies and me. We seemed to connect right away.  We checked our schedules and found that we pretty much follow one another all week. We have so much in common, not only this week but in the limitations that our diseases puts on our daily lives as well.   We seemed like a carbon copies of each other. It was amazing and very comforting at the same time. All to soon the technician arrived and we were all herded in at once to save time and try to keep us on schedules.

My next appointment was downstairs in the basement,  appropriate considering it was blood work.  I do mean  "Work" they took 14 vials of blood out of me, who had been fasting since supper the night before and with no medications or puffers this morning.  I was started to get light-headed. Imagine, 14 vials, blood-suckers they are, Vampires,  I say. However, I'm sad to say that none of them were Eric Northman from HBO's True Blood.  Believe me if they were, I wouldn't be doing this much grumbling hahaha

Next I did a Electrocardiogram (ECG) which examines the rhythm and the rate of my heart. Then on to do a Sputum Culture which is tested for bacteria, fungus, and Tuberculosis. And then I did a Cytotoxic Antibody Screen (PRA Levels) This test checks for antibodies (immunity) to other people,  If I have too much immunity further testing would be required to determine the strength so they can be better prepared to deal with this after the transplant.  Next, they sent me for a chest x-ray in which they are looking for infections or diseases in the heart and lungs. When I finished these round of tests, my head was really starting to pound. As a result we decided to go and get a wheelchair. All the walking between appointments, the elevators, carrying the oxygen which is larger and heavier then the one I have a home, plus no food hasn't helped me either. When we reached the lobby, we could see out front doors many firetrucks, I guess this explains why the west elevator wouldn't work for us. Oh well, we didn't see any smoke or fire so I guess we keep on trucking  lol.

Back up to the 12th floor we go for my 11:00am appointment with the Transplant Nutritionist Janet Madill.  She took my height and weight and put my body, mass and index (BMI) at 27 which is excellent. She looked over my charts that I filled out at home and had no complaints.  She was impressed about the weight I had gained over the last year. She wants me to keep a record of my weight each week for the next time we meet, when I come back up. She said the amount of pepsi I drink doesn't seem to be hurting me any but I should try to cut back a little.

Since we were running late to all our appointment this morning, my lunch hour was cut back to  half an hour or less, because of this Alan and I decided to head straight to the next appointment. Back down to the first floor for my Ventilation Perfusion Lung Scan (V|Q scan).  We found the place at 12:30 and they took me in right away, half hour early. This test gives them information about the air and blood flow

between the right and left lung.

The first part of the test, I found the most difficult, it was a plastic mouth piece attached to a tube and held between my teeth. At first I didn't realize that I could use my hand to help hold it. Then for the first five minutes I'm breathing in an odorless gas and then for the following five minutes I'm breathing in straight oxygen while all this shows up on the scanner.

The second part of the test is where they inject me with with a nuclear dye which also goes to my lungs and shows up on the scanner.

It's now only  1:30 and I'm finished for the day. We pick up lunch downstairs at the hospital and hail a cab and head back to our hotel. Where I headed straight to bed as my headache is now a migraine.

Off To Toronto For One Week

"I am not afraid of Tomorrow, for I have seen Yesterday, and I Love Today."

The day before our flight, we received enough snow to make the roads very messy. Because of this our daughter was scared to drive us to the airport ( I couldn't blame her as she hates driving in snow) Therefore Dennis, a very good friend said that he would take us. Well, the drive to Charlottetown turned out to be a bad one, and the choice to change drivers was a good one.  Our flight was at 06:10pm and we had to be at the airport at 5pm so we stopped and had supper on the way.

We arrived at the airport with lots of time to spare. We checked in, they put me in a wheelchair. ( I guess because I was on oxygen, I didn't ask why.}  What a rigmarole going through security, geesh.  Even my oxygen tanks were put through, I had to get out of the chair walk through without my oxygen.  The best part of all was while going through my purse they found my manicure set and took out the little scissors and tossed them in the garbage, I was mortified. Especially, because I knew I had traveled with this case many times and never lost anything out of it before. However, while sitting and waiting, it dawned on me,  the other times I'd traveled with the manicure case it was packed in my suitcase and not in my purse!! Whoops, my mistake. But it was enough for my husband to tease me for the rest of the flight and call me "the terrorist" who was going to try to take the whole plane down with a little pair of manicure scissors.

Next I want to talk about a company called Hope Air.  Hope Air is a non profit Canadian company made up of a  bunch of doctors and business people who get together and donate all their air miles for people who need to fly to other Provinces for medical treatment.  Treatment which they can't receive in their home province.Thanks to Hope Air my husband and myself flew to Toronto and back free of charge. They were also very polite, easy to deal with, and went out of there way to explain how everything was going to work for us.  God Bless Them! they made this trip so easy for us.   www.hopeair.org/pages/about_us/about_us_history.htm

When it came time to board the plane, a female airport attendant came and started pushing me outside to the plane. I knew what the regular staircase leading up to the plane looked like but this was the first time I see anything like this.  First there was a tiny ramp and then a landing which she had to turn my chair, then she had to push me up a long steep ramp up to another landing, turn the chair again and then push me up another long and even steeper ramp.  I felt so sorry for that poor woman.

West Jet is the only airline who allows people to carry oxygen on board. They saved me a lot of  trouble of trying to find an oxygen company in Toronto and have them meet me at the airport with tanks for the week and then the trouble of exchanging the tanks when I was flying back home. All West Jet asked was that I change my tanks here on the island for larger tanks so they could be hooked onto the floor of the plane.  Which I did but unfortunately,  the airport neglected to tell the plane that an oxygen patient was coming on board. So here was the poor stewardess on her hands and knees trying to hook up my oxygen, and they sent the rest of the passengers out about a minute behind me. Well they all came barreling on walking on the stewardess or trying to climb over top of her.  What a chaos,  I was thinking at the time that communication would have been so much easier.

The flight itself was very smooth and uneventful until we started to descend into Toronto. I had never flown into Toronto at night. All the lights were beautiful especially the CN Tower lit up. I was so excited, it was just gorgeous!

You have to agree with me, right?.  Absolutely beautiful!