Friend perspective on the dry run

 

 
 
 

Yesterday, and I guess this morning, allthough it's all kind of blurred together, were probebly the most insanely long unbeleivable period in my lifetime. It was like these two major things I'd been planning on and waiting to happen finally did, but, instead of feeling totally prepared and ready to take them, I just went into auto-pilot, accepting the facts, but not really taking them in.
    The day started out with a mind twister, the davinchi code, which was probebly the most sane part of my whole day, followed by lunch with amyk- which was great, but then all of a sudden, when I stepped onto that ferry, reality kind of slipped away and I was stuck wondering what the hell I was going to say for this interview. I was on the ferry with Luke, so of course he figured out my day plans and new where I was going after my interview where I met up with him later, but I'll get to that.
    Anyways, I flew through the interview and a half an hour later I was told to show up for work on the 176h of June in Idaho and work through the end of August, just like that, my whole summer spent away.
       Then I walked up to Nordstrom, bought some stuff and Luke finds me, and after quite an ordeal trying to pay with a nordstrom card, we finally got out of there and headed to coldstone.
    However, about 10 feet out of the mall Lukes scooter starts going about .25 miles an hour and I have to push him alllllll the way to coldstone and then allllll the way to the ferry. Good lord was I tired when I got on that ferry, I was so done for the day.
    But of course, I had to schedual some richie time, which I did, but by 9 I was watching an amstud video before bed, and right as the movie finished, the phone rings, and it's Luke- which isnt unlikely, but I did tell him to stop calling me past 9, so I was a tad confused, and then when I said hello, Laura was on the line and Luke was talking about how he had just recieved the call for transplant- which, to me, meant that we had 3 hours to get to UW ICU. (I had promised that I'd go along when he got the call if I was around) So off I went to the 11:35 ferry  with my dad where we met up with the chadwicks.
    Everything was so much calmer and relaxed than I had anticipated, jokes were told on the ferry, even Luke seemed to be doing great, and Ali (Luke's sister) was a bit tired and ticked at being woken up in the middle of the night, but other than that- everything went really smoothly.
    Upon ariving at the hospital, Luke was pretty much immediatly taken into this room and set up (oxygen, IV, heart moniter, the whole deal) while we waited on the surgeon to go to the accident site and perform the surgery to get the lungs and then return with them to run some more tests.
    Luke had told me previously that lots of people on the transplant list get "dry runs" where they call you and you rush in and then they basically tell you to go home. I hadnt previously understood that each time they called they really did have lungs they thought might be a match, and I also didn't know that there would be one or two other candidates waiting there going through the exact same process as us so when the lungs did arive the surgeon could choose the best posible location for the lungs, be them in Luke's chest or someone elses, or no where at all.
    We were up all night waiting to hear what was going on, and by around 4 the nurse came in and told us that they'd bring him into the operation room at 9 am and "cut time" was schedualed for 11am. It seemed so rediculously far away, but it gave us a vaugue idea of our window for sleep while still being able to see Luke off to surgery if/when he went.
    I fell asleep at four on a bench in the waiting room next to Ali. Lukes parents, Kent and Cathy switched off between sleeping in the waiting room and sleeping in Luke's prep room, so someone was with him the whole time.
    At 7:15 when I was supposed to call Laura we still new nothing more than what I've already mentioned, but 9am was seeming like it could happen any moment. Ali and I went to buy breakfast and step outside for some fresh air, and then shortly after coming back upstairs, Kent told us that Luke was awake and we could go see him. The entire family and myself went into the room and talked for about an hour, and the time soon got to be 8:53a., 7 minutes before he was schedualed to be taken to the op. room. Then, some guy came in (I hadn't seen him the whole night, not sure if anyone else had) and said something along the lines of "the lungs are no good, you can go home after we set you up with a social worker apt. and get you unplugged" and that was basically the end of it. We were out of there at 930ish and off to iHop and the only thing Luke had to show for it were a few stab marks from needles and these sicky things that wouldnt seem to stop appearing on his back.
       It was so weird how closely the two emotions of dissapointment and releif went completely hand in hand the rest of the afternoon. But, on a positive note, Luke had said that he wanted a dry run before the real thing so he would know what it was like without actually going through the whole thing.
    The entire concept of a transplant is really real to me now- but at the same time all of yesterday and this morning seems like a total dream.
    I'm sure I'm forgetting some key things but give me a break, I'm tired.

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