My Open Heart

I did eventually get to leave the hospital and was able to celebrate my 21st birthday at home on March 10, 2006. At that point, we decided that the best place to have my transplant was at Columbia Presbyterian in NYC, the hospital I had gone to for my heart problem when we lived in New Jersey.
Nothing was scheduled yet. The doctors were working on getting things set up. To be perfectly honest, I don’t know what was happening with what at that point. I just knew I was going to go to New York and have a heart transplant. I was also still not feeling well and having a lot of trouble eating. Kelly made BBQ ribs for my birthday party, and I think I ate one bite of one. I think I also ate one slice of my cake. But that was it.
When I started to get worse again, we went back to the doctor. They determined that the infection had not cleared up yet and that I needed to be hospitalized again.
During all of the time I had the infection, I was placed on a heavy dose of antibiotics. Because I wasn’t eating, that did a number on my digestive system. I had more problems with that than I care to remember. While I was in the hospital, I had a tube down my nose to help clean out my digestive tract and was fed through IVs. I couldn’t eat at all at this point. I was miserable.