rejection sucks
I am supposed to be driving to Seattle right now to pick up my little sister Heidi to finally come to visit! We've both been so excited about this trip: she planned her plane outfit probably 2 months ago and I went and got our fave snacks the other night in preparation. And then I get off of work yesterday and there are 3 missed calls from her. As a side note, can I just say how much I hate missing 2 or more calls from anyone in my family? My stomach always sinks when this happens. Its probably because the times when this has occured has been when my Grandpa suddenly died a year ago, and then when Heidi "got the call" to quickly go to Stanford Hospital for her long awaited double lung transplant. This brings me to the triple call from Heidi yesterday. Shes had a cold for about a week now and the doctors think that her body might be rejecting her donor lungs. When she got out of the hospital last summer, I was under the impression that "rejection" meant that it was irreversible, her body would need NEW lungs (of which a proper match is only 25% of the time available in America because of the high need). So now she isn't coming to visit.
I'm thinking so many things right now about this although the feelings of grief and loneliness in my grief have become familiar. I mean initially I'm thinking it is so fucking unfair that this would happen NOW, the day before her planned trip. What is the point of that? My Christian heritage and even my sincere hope for things to be different condition me to think "There is a reason" "God knows". But really? Is there really a plan? Cause I'm digging and I don't see it. And I'm not going to trick myself into seeing it. She couldnt even be afforded one little mini-vacay away on her own with her older sister, just 3 days of living life and having fun? ITS POINTLESS. And I don't even know what to do with that. I don't know what to do with what doesn't make sense, or with grief that spills out in sobs that dont have any tears, just nausea and literal heart-ache, teeth clinching and world spiraling.
And then another wave hits me of the fact that she is rejecting. Well what does this mean? My mom tells me she doesn't know exactly because they didn't read the packet when she got home from the hospital after the transplant. And I'm thinking "why the hell didn't you read that?". I'm thinking this because I think thats true but also because I want to look for something to blame, something to once again make sense of why we are here right now. Its definitely got nothing to do with reading a packet or not. But I realized quickly upon talking to my mom that she was delivering this information to me while she is at the hospital in a waiting room BY HERSELF, hearing that her 24 year old daughter might be in rejection. And those feelings I couldn't even imagine.
Apparently, rejection after a transplant is something that can be somewhat common and there is something called acute rejection which they refer to as an "episode". That one word, "episode" might be the only thing that doesn't make me run for the hills tonight. My family is far away; this grief is my own; I can't change her situation; and God doesn't make sense. I have nothing creative or poignant to wrap this up with. I will say that it brought me a HUGE sense of relief to open my email and see that she had already changed her itinerary to May 15th, just 2 weeks from now. I guess life means we continue to make plans, look forward to them, wait for things to happen, hope that it'll be good. Cause if I stayed in this, right now, I would be a nihilist. And it is all not nothing.
I'm thinking so many things right now about this although the feelings of grief and loneliness in my grief have become familiar. I mean initially I'm thinking it is so fucking unfair that this would happen NOW, the day before her planned trip. What is the point of that? My Christian heritage and even my sincere hope for things to be different condition me to think "There is a reason" "God knows". But really? Is there really a plan? Cause I'm digging and I don't see it. And I'm not going to trick myself into seeing it. She couldnt even be afforded one little mini-vacay away on her own with her older sister, just 3 days of living life and having fun? ITS POINTLESS. And I don't even know what to do with that. I don't know what to do with what doesn't make sense, or with grief that spills out in sobs that dont have any tears, just nausea and literal heart-ache, teeth clinching and world spiraling.
And then another wave hits me of the fact that she is rejecting. Well what does this mean? My mom tells me she doesn't know exactly because they didn't read the packet when she got home from the hospital after the transplant. And I'm thinking "why the hell didn't you read that?". I'm thinking this because I think thats true but also because I want to look for something to blame, something to once again make sense of why we are here right now. Its definitely got nothing to do with reading a packet or not. But I realized quickly upon talking to my mom that she was delivering this information to me while she is at the hospital in a waiting room BY HERSELF, hearing that her 24 year old daughter might be in rejection. And those feelings I couldn't even imagine.
Apparently, rejection after a transplant is something that can be somewhat common and there is something called acute rejection which they refer to as an "episode". That one word, "episode" might be the only thing that doesn't make me run for the hills tonight. My family is far away; this grief is my own; I can't change her situation; and God doesn't make sense. I have nothing creative or poignant to wrap this up with. I will say that it brought me a HUGE sense of relief to open my email and see that she had already changed her itinerary to May 15th, just 2 weeks from now. I guess life means we continue to make plans, look forward to them, wait for things to happen, hope that it'll be good. Cause if I stayed in this, right now, I would be a nihilist. And it is all not nothing.
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