Birthday

1/7/2011
I have been feeling a little "under the weather" from the medication change, but Tuesday I had my biopsy and convinced my doctors to changes my meds back and now I am feeling back to normal. Really though, after getting my labs back, all that I think was wrong is that my magnesium and potassium were REALLY low. As soon as the office got the results, they called me and told me to take 8 pills of K+ and 900mg of Mg and in a few hours I felt waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better. Some of the antirejection medications make mineral and vitamins leach from your bones and body and I think that was what was happening to me. When you do not have enough or you have too much K+ and/or Mg you can have irregular hear beats which can make you feel really rotten. I really thought everything was going wrong with this new medication and I was rejecting again, but after I took the K+ and Mg I felt fine and then the next day I got my biopsy results and it was another 1R/1A-which is no change on the rejection (I always have minimal rejection) and the inflammation went down! So now I am trying to get off the prednisone AGAIN and will go back in 2 months (after I have been off for awhile) to see if everything is ok.
If I was a normal heart transplant patient by now I would be off the prednisone, have a regular medication schedule, getting labs every month (I get them about every other week to every week), and go to the clinic every three months. Knowing this, I just did not feel that it was a good time to start nursing school, so I finally emailed my counselor and told her to push me off until the fall of 2011 because of the complications. I feel good about this decision because it will give be more time to get back to normal and do things that I would have never been able to do.
Well I just celebrated my 23rd birthday! I have to thank God and my donor for letting me be with my family for another year.
The next part not everyone may agree with or want to read, but my blog is about an honest account of what it is like to have a heart transplant.
On my birthday, the one present I really wanted was to not have to take my 3 sets of many pills. The day was kind of a hard day because for many days before and after I was not feeling well and by that day I felt like I should just get to be a Princess and not have to take my meds, but I still did. I have never missed a dosage of my medications, but I still have a love hate relationship with them. I love them because they keep me alive (thank you Norm Shumway for realizing cyclosporine prevented rejection!) but I hate them because they can make me feel sick (I must take them with food), I hate the taste and smell of them and I hate sorting through them knowing that I must take them-this is part of my rebellious nature. But I am back to feeling "normal" being back on the myfortic.
So for my first post of 2011 I am posting my resolution and that is to just keep on with what I did with 2010-be thankful for my new life and don't hold back! Go out, have fun, do stuff! Volunteer with CTDN so all the people I know waiting for their transplants can get a chance at their new lives!

10/31/10 Back to School

10/31/10 Back to School
So I am taking a class for Jackie so she has units, but she doesn't have time to take it. I picked a class that I had taken before, that was easy, that I had gotten a PERFECT score in, and that I thought would be a breeze (International Business-just in case you were wondering). My brain is just starting to get the wheels going, but it is really hard to get the rust off. It feels good to get into the groove of things again, I have never known anything besides being in school-that has been my career for almost 20 years and the thought of being able to go being able to go back to school next semester is really exciting. Even though this class is busy work, I actually started to enjoy it because it was just nice to be back in the educational setting. It was so weird because I have not necessarily forgotten so much, but I lost it from my memory-it somewhat feels like an amnesia that I am rebuilding. Some of this information feels familiar, but some of it I am having to re-learn.
So anyways, here is my little set up, where I saved up all of my (Jackie's) homework for the week (because my textbook did not come until Saturday) and I worked for 4 hours straight, and I did the extra credit (but I don't know if I did it right-but I always attempt extra credit!).

And I have to say I wrote this and spell checked it and it said there were no misspellings-wow, I think that is progress people!