Day 1059

     The day has come.  Today, October 12, 2016, marks 3 years since my transplant and basically 2 years since I finished chemo.  Wow!  Has it really been 3 whole years already?  It feels like it was just yesterday.  At the same time, lengthy pre-bed treatments, tube fed meals, coughing, lack of appetite, burning lungs, beeping IVs, oxygen tanks and an overall struggle to survive seem like a very distant memory.  I almost can't remember my life before transplant, almost.  
     Making it to 3 years is huge.  About 40% of my fellow transplant patients don't make it this far.  It is not just a statistic but something I have seen play out.  I have seen the dreaded message about a friend needing prayer as they take a turn for the worse.  Many tears have been shed as those battles come to an end.  It is an interesting experience to see friend after friend suddenly go downhill all while I am sitting here fine.  It is confusing, on one hand, filling my head with the why me's of survival and yet, it is also calming.  There is an interesting peace that comes with knowing, truly knowing, how fragile and temporary life truly is.  At any moment it can be taken from me, from any of us, and the thing is, there is nothing any of us can do about it.  
     So what do you do with this information?  You live.  You find what matters, what is worth your time, what makes you happy and fills you up and cut out what doesn't.  You fill it with adventure, with fun and laughter.  You fill it with people in community sharing struggles, joys, laughter and pain.  You say yes to opportunities and try not to let worry about the little things stop you from experiencing the big things.     
     3 years means I have lived 3 years longer than I was supposed to.  3 years means I have gotten to experience almost 3 years of "normal" life (all except that little cancer blip, two years ago).  I have had 3 years to share laughs and play games.  3 years to be silly and make up songs.  3 years to pull all-nighters full of good conversations.  3 years to explore this crazy planet and go on spontaneous adventures big and small.  3 years to meet people and make friends and I've loved it!  
    I won't lie and say I have enjoyed every minute but I have definitely liked a lot of it and I wouldn't do it differently if I went back.  These last 3 years have been some of the craziest but also some of the best years of my life.  If 3 years is all I get, I know that I lived those years to the fullest!  And, if I get more time, I plan to keep on living it, one day at a time because, honestly, that is all any of can really do!      
     This year to celebrate I am going somewhere to see my human smallness and fragility in a more tangible way, under the stars and the rising sun, surrounded by good friends, with an early morning trip to the Grand Canyon!  Until next time, get out there and live!

    

It's the End, or maybe just the middle

Two quick announcemnets
 this summer we are participating in the CF climb challenge, if you will be in Colorado June 25th please consider joining our team

Also we are selling lemon shirts again as a fundraiser for our climb team, so if you missed it last time here is your chance to get one, or if you grew out of the last one! :P




As  I write this I am sitting in the practice rooms at GCU spending my last hours of the semester hanging with friends listening to music.  WOW!  I can't believe this year is almost over.  Between me and summer are a few hours of sleep, several sweaty trips to the storage unit and a 14 hour car ride home.  A year ago I would never have imagined my year would turn out like this.  It is amazing how different college was for me this time around, from being able to walk quickly to class, to actually talking to people and gaining the freshmen (can I still call it that?) 15....well....20.  If this is the only good year I get with these lungs, it was worth it.  I did so many awesome things and met a ton of really cool people.

Well as usual life got in the way of writing.  I am now home.  There were indeed many sweaty trips to the storage unit but the sleep thing was more of an ideal than a reality. 

This year was, dare I say it, the best year of my life so far.  It also was the hardest goodbye I have had yet.  I know I will see all these awesome people again soon but for now we have 115 days to get through.

Although the goodbye was hard, I am glad for it because a gloomy goodbye means we had an amazingly awesome time together.  Feeling blah about going home for the summer, means I have built roots and found a new home.  It means I have made the friends and connections I have always wanted.  It means I finally got the college experience I dreamed of and for that I am extremely thankful.  I dreamed days like these would be possible but was never completely certain they would be in the cards for me, yet here I am.  

This reminds me of a saying one of my transplant friends doctors told her "transplant is a bridge, some people get right across, some get stuck in traffic but at the end of the day, we all eventually make it across."  Well I think it is safe to say I have made it across the bridge.  Not just the bridge of transplant either but the bridge of anxiety as well.  

I don't think I have talked about it much here but I have struggled with depression and anxiety for most of my life since high school.  My biggest issue was social anxiety disorder, which is, simply put, an extreme fear of other people.  At my worst I refused to leave my dorm room to hang out with people and even mostly stopped eating because it was just too much to drag myself to the cafeteria to eat around, or possibly with other people.  I have gone through years of medication and many many hours of counseling to get me to the point I am at.  That was another bridge I didn't think could be crossed.  From my beginning perspective it looked like the bridge had fallen into the water.  However, it turned out the bridge took a few steps down but continued on and did indeed cross the river.  I know the bridge of anxiety is not over, I am nearing the end, I hope, but there are still situations that I feel the nerves well up inside and I being to shut down, but the fact that I have so many good friends that I feel mostly comfortable around shows the immense progress I have made.  Oh and did I mention I did all that without medication!

I think that all of life is a bridge really.  You never are completely over any one bridge.  The terrain may change, going form a sketchy, narrow hanging wooden bridge swinging in the wind above a 5000 foot drop, to a wide paved multi lane concrete bridge 20 feet above a slow moving river, but ultimately there will always be challenges to get across in life.  The good news is that we have people around us to travel with, and an awesome God leading the way.  That is a fact I can fix my eyes on as I go through the bridge of summer, and if this smooth bridge turns rocky again, which is inevitable, I have people and a God I can cling to!

Here is a quick summery of my year

2 year lungaversary dinner

Hiking with the roomie

Sebastian came to visit!

Volunteered with Jenna at our church's Halloween event

Yes I sometimes did homework!

Dorm event with most of my roommates

Wandering in the wilderness!  (we meant to go hiking but never found the trail)

Sunrise at the Grand Canyon!!!

Horseshoe bend

It wouldn't be college without late night food runs!

The guys photobombed this (does it count if we knew?)

College Group Selfie!

Watched The Common Thread perform at the fair!  check them out at here

Copycat pic shenanigans!

Moving On

So Im sad to tell you that its been so long since I last posted that I actually forgot how to write a new blog post!  (I'll blame it on the chemo brain, how long does that last by the way?)  But as I mentioned before I am living a healthy productive, rich life and for that I am not sorry!  I am continuing to make progress.  A few weeks ago I got my G-tube out.  It is a little bitter sweet, my tube was the last remnant of my old life that still remained, well except for my crappy stomach, but we have already covered that one. see here  Anyway, it hasn't been too rough having it out.  I had thought I would need surgery to get the hole closed but the doc thought it would close on its own.  I decided to give it a go and see if I can save myself a surgery.  So far it is closed for the most part (Hallelujah praise the lord!)  it leeks from time to time but most of the time its nice and dry!

As I lose my old life physically the last dried shriveled up remnants are falling off mentally.  My job has been a great help to shake off the last part of my anxiety!  (shake it off, shake it off Oh Oh... there is some real truth to that song yo!)  I am also beginning to get used to this whole idea of being active.  Today for instance I went on a walk through the Mecca of all dog parks and I enjoyed every minute of it!  The old me would have been miserable and constantly calculating where the next place to rest is and the fastest way back to the car.  But I wasn't I barely even felt like I was doing any work at all, and lets be honest walking isn't exactly strenuous exercise!  At Easter I got a lot of my family to play kick ball and I had a blast.  Running from base to base was no problem.  I almost would go as far as to say I love moving!  Not like formal excise but I do love doing active things!  The old pathway of my brain have grown over and I no longer despise excise and with that its time to step, maybe even run into the new improved and probably more true to who I am, me!