A Step Back in Time

This photo has nothing to do with anything apart from the fact that this door makes me want to giggle every time I sit in the waiting room.

Anyway.... I went to see my Respiratory Specialist today. We lamented the fact that I still haven't had a phonecall, and pondered the reasons why, and had a chat about the olden days.

In the olden days, he hand wrote all of my notes on foolscap paper, and the receptionist would file them inside a manila folder. These days, everything is on the laptop.

I asked him if he could find the oldest pulmonary function test results that he had on the laptop. I started seeing him in 1990, but the oldest he could find in a hurry were from 1993.

In 1993, I was 18 years old, 169cm tall, and weighed 59 kgs.
In 1993, Melbourne phone numbers were still only 7 digits.
In 1993, I played Basketball and Netball and was in my first year at Uni.
In 1993, I could run up and down flights of stairs at work with no problems.

And this is today.

One Year Ago Today

Just marking time again.

One year today since that 4AM phonecall.

After receiving that call after only seven weeks, I would have never thought that I'd still be waiting one year later.

It's worrying.

I don't know whether there haven't been any matches, or whether there have been matches but someone else on the list is more ill than me and closer to the end without a transplant.

Trying not to think about it.

Had to just get the words out of my head.

A Gracious Gift

You may remember Will from A Gracious Gift.

I posted his video here a while ago, or you may have seen him in print and tv advertisements.

Will needed a heart/double lung transplant by Christmas to save his life.

I was so happy to see this on Facebook just before my pulmonary rehab session thismorning.

More from Will at Don't Bury Me

Deleting

I was trying to take photos on my iPhone yesterday afternoon when a warning flashed up that the memory was nearly full (no wonder with 9068 photos)!

So now I'm sitting here deleting and I came across these.

The aftermath of the false alarm.

Counting the needle holes in that photo, there was at least 14 attempts at the epidural. No wonder I had a backache for two weeks. Ouch.

Anyway.. the Ombudsman's report into last years closure of the Lung Transplant program at the Alfred was released today.

Here's today's Age Newspaper report:


The Alfred hospital in Melbourne turned away a set of lungs during a week-long closure of its lung transplant program due to a lack of funding, the ombudsman has found.

But the lungs were from a 71-year-old and would have been unlikely to be used had the program been operating due to the person's age.

Alfred Health shut its adult transplant program from September 22 to 28 in 2011.

It had been expecting $3 million in funding from the Department of Health that did not eventuate.

 

Ombudsman George Brouwer said during the closure, a set of lungs from an obese 71-year-old was rejected.

He said due to the person's age they would not have been used had the program been running, but it was lucky more organs were not rejected.

"While my investigation concluded that the closure did not appear to have had an adverse impact on patients in critical need, it was fortuitous that The Alfred only received (and rejected) one organ offer during the closure, as in previous weeks it had received up to eight offers," Mr Brouwer said in his report tabled to parliament on Wednesday.

He criticised the hospital for failing to conduct an independent costing review of its transplant program, despite promising to do so one year ago.

Lung transplants at The Alfred doubled from 2006-07 to 2010-11 as a result of the federal government's initiative to increase organ and tissue donations.

Clinical director Professor Trevor Williams said the program's staff and funding was based on the historical figure of between 40 and 45 lung transplants each year and the hospital was tracking to perform twice that in 2011-12.

AAP

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/alfred-hospital-turned-away-transplant-lungs-20121010-27cc4.html#ixzz28t7buUpx

False Alarms

It's been nearly a year since my false alarm.

I was really sad to read this week that little Coen Ashton had a false alarm on Wednesday. His mum has written a blog post.

There are no words. I get butterflies in my stomach just reading it.