@hogan_g1937 First, I am tremendously impressed at the clarity of @rosemary memories! I remember getting the call sometime in the vicinity of 12:30 pm, feeling very calm, and grabbing my bag which was already pretty much packed, and going. Both my husband and I were very calm. I was remarkably well up until the last month and a half prior to transplant and then things went downhill so I was just relieved that soon I would be doing better. The call came more than a month earlier than I had been told would be the earliest I would be called, so we were stunned when it did. Looking back on the trip to the hospital it seems almost surreal.

We got to the hospital and from there on in things are a blur to me! Many people checking on me and so forth. The surgeon who was to do the surgery visited us (this was mid-afternoon) and said the surgery would be much later. My husband asked him what he was doing then and he responded that he was going home to take a nap! We were glad he would be well rested. I was in a room in the transplant area and then the time finally came when they brought me to the surgical unit. I remember nothing from then until after surgery. I do know no one brought me a milkshake!

Of course I was tired and the pain medications tend to really make me more so I slept a lot. I did have some pain while in the hospital, particularly the first couple of days. I don't remember the pain as much as I remember saying I was in pain. I could not administer my own medications but at one point when I was in pain and distraught a nurse came in and chided me for not calling her. She immediately brought me some pain medication. So if the transplant center your husband is at is like mine (MGH) make sure he lets them know if he needs more pain medication. Do you mind saying what transplant center he is listed at?

My surgery took place at 12:30 A.M. on a Friday, and I was released the following Thursday. The surgery took 7.5 hours and I discovered afterwards that there were actually 3 transplant surgeons in there! Once home I had to take it easy of course and my husband did a lot to help me. I generally do recover quickly so I was able to be up and walking around the house in a relatively short period of time. I intended to keep a journal of all of this but that went by the wayside, something I regret.

I had in-house PT for a few weeks, maybe a month, I forget exactly how long. If you are on Medicare that is a provided service as long as you are home bound. If you start going out the PT has to end. Then you can go to outpatient PT until you get back to speed with and in better shape. I was not supposed to drive as long as I was on pain meds -- that gave me an incentive to get off of the medications because I do not like being dependent on others. I think there was another restriction that I was not supposed to drive until my incision was pretty well healed but I am not sure of that one. Speaking of incisions, some people have minor discomfort from the incision for quite a while afterwards. My incision discomfort only lasted a couple of weeks.

From there things proceeded very smoothly. I know from what I have heard at the post transplant clinic that my recuperation was better than typical. The first post transplant visit, a week after I was discharged from the hospital, they were surprised at how good I looked and commented that many patients come in in wheel chairs, some even on stretchers. So how a patient is doing at that point can run the gamut.

If you have any specific questions please feel free to ask. If I can't remember I will ask my husband, he may remember things better than I do.
JK