I Don’t Want a Transplant

I never wanted a transplant. From the moment I found out I had lung disease I believed that God would heal me and that one day I wouldn’t need Prednisone or oxygen. as time passed I realized that I wasn’t getting any better but was on a slow, steady decline. It turned out, God had plans to heal me but not the way I thought.

My doctors eventually told me that I would need a transplant and I needed to think about getting evaluated in order to move forward and become eligible for it. I didn’t want a transplant, so I ignored them. I had no intentions of undergoing all those tests for evaluation, especially the cardiac catheter. That’s where they take a needle and shoot some liquid in a vein in your neck that travels through your blood vessels to your heart. Nope, I didn’t need or want that in my life. I figured I would rock out on my oxygen tank forever.

After my third annual visit of a week-long stay in the hospital for a lung infection, my doctor said, “Look, you are going to need this transplant and you’re running out of time.” But, she explained further; “Inasmuch as you need one, you don’t qualify for it at 262 lbs. What are you going to do about it?”

I thought to myself, What the hell can I do about it on 40mg of Prednisone a day?

“How much time do I have?”

“Maybe two years at best.”

“Alright.”

I can’t even verbalize how pissed I was!

I came home, thought long and hard then decided to try to lose the weight. What the fuck, I was fat; I knew it. I downloaded some Weight Watchers material, I also invested in a case of green tea, (I was told it help cut your appetite, and it did) I cut out carbohydrates, sugar and all things white and eventually began to lose weight. I lost 2–2.5 lbs. a week.

It took me two years to lose 90 lbs.

Finally, my weight was within the range I needed it to be in order to be listed as a candidate for a double lung transplant.

I still wasn’t interested in getting listed for the transplant but my doctor explained it is better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

Then something happened that changed everything. Bernie Mac died. We shared the same disease and by this time I knew I had maybe a year left.

I finally agreed to be listed, but I wanted an Inactive status which meant I didn’t want anyone calling me in the middle of the night to tell me they had a set of lungs. Even then I still didn’t want a transplant but if I needed one I wanted to have the say-so in the matter.

About a year later I was at work and found myself in respiratory failure.

I was glad that I had gotten listed because they only had to change my status to Active. This put me at the top of the waiting list for a set of lungs. I was then the 2nd highest in the country in line to receive a transplant because I was dying.

The very thing that I didn’t want to do, I now wanted to do because I wanted to live. Don’t get me wrong, I would have done anything to not have a transplant, but I had no other choice and life was still more appealing than dying.

You see, my reason for not wanting the transplant was based on fear of dying which was ridiculous because I was dying, anyway.

That experience taught me that the views we have about things we “think” we know are often tainted by statistics, ignorance, and fear.

It taught me to take chances and “do it afraid,” regardless of what it is and what the statistical data says.

Statistical data on lung transplants at the time I transplanted was 50% survival rate for three to five years. I will celebrate a 10-year anniversary in September.

Now if you ask me, “If you go into rejection would you have another transplant?” I don’t know, I still don’t want a transplant even after having had one. I base my position on experience this time, not fear of the unknown. It saved my life once and as much as I am enjoying this life; the fight and struggle through another operation scares the hell out of me.

But as those who have had a second transplant have said, (yes I know of a few) no two transplants are alike just like no two pregnancies are alike.

Nevertheless, I tell you this, I still don’t want another transplant any more than I want another pregnancy, especially after thirty years.