Today, Tuesday March 16, 2010, marks a year and a half since my double lung and heart transplant. This past Saturday, the 13th, marked 9 months since my left lung re-transplant. 😀
Health wise I’m doing much better. My recovery is going well, and I’m coughing much less. The next step is to start weaning myself off the oxygen as the infection/fungus in my lungs clear. I’ll know more once a week has passed since my last dosage of antibiotic.
I participate in a few transplant/heart -lung support groups online. Through one of them, I found out about a book called Taking Flight: Inspirational Stories of Lung Transplantation by Joanne Schum. She is writing a second addition and has put out a call for entries. I’m thinking of submitting my story for the book. If I’m going to participate I need to submit my story to her by May 1st. I’ve been racking my brains on how to go about writing it, but I’m mentally stuck. I know I should start my first draft, but there is a small voice in the back of my head telling me that I still have plenty of time. This is like grad school all over again… procrastinator should be my middle name.
On the knitting front, I decided to do something productive with all my yarn. Seeing how 70% of my yarn is sock yarn, (and yes, I did a quick calculation from my stash page!) I decided to sort and organize them. Originally I thought about making sock kits. Like the kind I get in the mail through my sock club. In a ziplock bag I would put a copy of the pattern, the yarn, any errata that may exist, and the required supplies written on an index card. I got the inspiration for this from Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, aka the Yarn Harlot. In one of her blog entries she wrote about how she made herself sock kits. Every month she grabs one of the kits and knits a sock so that she’ll have at least 12 pairs knit by the end of the year. Genius!
I set off by going through Ravelry choosing patterns that I liked and printing them out. I also ordered a bunch of patterns online. When it came down to looking at my stash and determining which yarn should go with which pattern, I hit a wall. I could not just randomly put a kit together. When I did take a pattern and attempted to find yarn to match, I kept wavering. What if I get new yarn I’d rather use? What if I regret using up this yarn? What if I want to make gloves or a scarf or something other than sock with it later on? Is it too selfish knitting up all this yarn to my foot size? I may want it to make a present for someone… etc, etc. Even though I know I can change my mind at any time, and I know I can go through the kits and pull out the yarn willy nilly as I want/need them, the perfectionist in me just couldn’t do it. *sigh*
So, I abandoned ship on the idea and decided to make a dedicated binder instead. Last year I bought a 3 ring binder to keep the dyers notes and patterns for my sock club, but there’s still a ton of space in it so I decided to use it. I put all my patterns – in sheet protectors, alphabetized (of course) – in the front half of the binder and then put the sock club patterns and such in the back half of the binder. Now when I want to make socks I will have a resource of patterns that I know I already like on hand. Usually I spend hours pouring over patterns on Ravelry before deciding on one. Hopefully this will make the process much faster. Now that I have this dedicated sock binder, the goal is print out sock patterns that I like as I come across them and file them away. We’ll see how long this lasts.
The weather here has been beautiful these days… clear, sunny skies with a cool breeze and temperatures around 70 degrees. I seriously think I won’t be able to live anywhere else. When we have a heat wave it’s no more than 90 degrees and lasts for less than a week or two. The kicker for me is that I love the fog. Other people complain about it all the time, but there is nothing like coming home from playing in the bay area on a warm day and driving into the city to be greeted with nature’s free air conditioning. Within half an hour you can cross the golden gate bridge and be in the protected headlands and go hiking or biking. You can cross the bay and be in the wine country in just about an hour and a half. You can go downtown and shop to your hearts content, and San Francisco has some great food. Usually I take these things for granted, but today as we drove through golden gate park my mom mentioned how nice it is to be able to see the ocean everyday and how lovely the weather was. I looked around with tourist eyes and really appreciated the beautiful city that I live in.
p.s – I would love some more book recommendations (see post below) – I know more than 6 people read this blog!
p.p.s – Thanks everyone for supporting me through all the medical madness I’ve been through the past year and a half. I appreciate it more than you’ll ever know.
Cindy said:
Definitely contribute to the book! I think you should start with the time you wrote on carol’s hand “dense.” Or how you tricked your dad into getting a haircut for solidarity. Or how, despite being on ECMO, you managed a “gold star” by standing up and walking.
No book recommendations unless you want to read non-fiction. Then we can talk.
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Susan said:
The problem with telling said stories is that my memory is crap. All the anesthesia, radiation, and drugs have fried my brain cells so I don’t remember the details of most things that happened, let alone the fun stuff. Maybe Carol would be willing to write a portion of it…
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Jami said:
You should definitely contribute to the book! If you can’t remember you could have “Susan story night” and we could all come over and remind you of things that happened….The time you told me–without being able to talk–to dampen a washcloth and fold it in fifths (!!!) and put it on your forehead is always good for a laugh.
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Ed said:
I’d be very interested in reading whatever comes out of this, and it sounds like you have plenty of ghostwriters to help you out.
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Thanh said:
Oh Susan you should definitely contribute to the book!!! I think you have already done your homework!! YOUR BLOG is your draft. All you need to do is write an introduction and a great ending. If you need help with a title, how about this….”I AM YOO”…
I am so excited for you!! Please let me know if you need help!
One day, when I am free of the bronchitis, I can come eat lunch with you!!
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Cindy said:
I love Jami’s suggestion! We can all submit nuggets of what we remember… although this may be overwhelming for a chapter. But then you’d have plenty of material from which to pick/choose/edit.
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Janet said:
I’m excited to hear that you will be contributing to the book! Unfortunately, my memory is crap, too (but I don’t have any good excuses like anesthesia, radiation or drugs).
If I had half a brain to remember book titles, I’d be able to make recommendations…but um…see above.
Will go check out the Donate Life stuff now. Might actually be able to join you guys this year!
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