Chasing Air: My Quest for a Lung Transplant Journey (Part 4)

Waking up after a Double Lung Transplant

Waking up from surgery is always a bit surreal. Because of the medications, you usually don’t reach a true dream state. Most people describe it as falling asleep and then suddenly being awakened by voices, lights, and a heavy grogginess. Everyone reacts differently to anesthesia and medications. The side effects along with the procedure itself even periods of oxygen deprivation can all lead to some very “odd” experiences, including hallucinations.

Hearing my family and the care team wake me and tell me the surgery was a success is something that truly hits your very soul. I felt a flood of emotions all at once. I remember falling asleep before surgery thinking about my donor, and then waking up thinking about him again. Only this time, a part of him was inside me and thriving. Taking my first breath with his lungs was such a blessing from God. Never had I felt that kind of deep expansion in my lungs before. The air flowed in so effortlessly and kept going. I had to remind myself to breathe more deeply because I was so used to shallow breathing. Honestly, I still struggle with that at times.

After surgery, you’re still on oxygen, but at much lower levels than before. I believe I was on about 2 liters per minute, which is fairly normal. Mentally, though, that adjustment was immense. I had relied on high levels of oxygen for so long that the care team decided to slowly lower it without telling me exactly when, just so I wouldn’t panic. I know that may sound odd or even cruel, but the mental anxiety tied to oxygen dependence is intense. It almost feels like an addiction not because oxygen isn’t needed; but because your mind becomes convinced you can’t function without it. Even with their careful approach, I still had moments of anxiety as they lowered it. Over time, though, it became a gradual process of retraining my mind and body so that I could eventually leave the hospital without oxygen at all. That moment was both absolutely astonishing and incredibly scarey.

Another frightening thing they don’t always warn you about is the hallucinations. Between the medications, lack of oxygen, and the overall pandemonium of the ICU, your mind can create very real experiences that aren’t actually happening. I’ve had clients and friends tell me about hallucinations they experienced during hospital stays, and I experienced them myself. Even now, they’re so ingrained in my memory that they feel real, even though I know they weren’t.

I vividly remember “seeing” construction workers in the ICU, using forklifts, climbing into the ceiling, and drilling. To this day, I can picture their bright yellow hard hats and hear the drilling sounds in the main ICU hallway near the nurses’ station. I kept thinking, They can’t be doing this right now. Why are they here? How is this allowed? They’re going to get everyone sick. Internally, I was struggling with this dilemma and growing more distressed. I kept telling my mom and my boyfriend, now my husband, that it needed to be stopped. They tried to calm me and reassure me that none of it was happening, but I was so insistent and argumentative that they eventually just went along with it. As I became more alert, the hallucinations stopped, and when I later left the ICU, we even went to that exact spot so I could see for myself that nothing had been happening there. It was incredibly bizarre.

With a surgery this intense, you’re hooked up to just about everything imaginable. There are tubes everywhere inside and outside your body. I had at least four chest tubes coming out of my chest, draining excess fluid from the surgery. It was extremely uncomfortable. I don’t remember being in pain at that point, but I couldn’t move without a tube pulling or without needing help from several members of the care team. Instantly after you’re awake or at least feeling slightly less like you’ve been hit by a truck, the care team wants you sitting up and walking. This is critical to prevent blood clots, pneumonia, and other complications from being sedentary for too long.

That loss of independence is hard. You rely on others for nearly everything. At first, it feels comforting, but over time it becomes mentally draining especially for me, since I was hospitalized for 28 days and attached to chest tubes for so long.

Walking even one lap around the ICU was a major production. It took several nurses just to coordinate it. With all the machines still attached, it felt like preparing for a major trekking expedition like climbing Mount Everest just to walk a short loop. It was both exhilarating and alarming. But every single step and breath was a gift, one I didn’t take for granted.