Charlotte's Heart Transplant

What is rejection? After transplant, one of the words that gets thrown around a lot and causes a lot of panic is 'rejection'. Because your new organ is in fact not yours the body sees it as a 'foreign object'. The antigens on the new organ are different to what the body recognises and this is why during transplant assessment they test your blood for your personal antigens and they try and match them as closely as they can to your donor organ, the closer they are the lower the risk of rejection. So you're not just matched based on blood type, it's a lot more complex than that. However, no matter how close the match, rejection of some scale is almost certain to happen in the first 6 months after transplant, although it is usually treatable (or often doesn't even need treatment) because it is caught early through frequent biopsies. Biopsies test for rejection at a cellular level before damage is done to the organ, there are 4 levels used to describe rejecti...

08.07.2018 I thought I would catch you all up on where I'm up to in my recovery! I am now 4 months post-op. At 3 months I was allowed to drive again because the breastbone is usually healed after that time, and it can then take up to 6 months for the muscles to stitch back together. Pain level Even though I was allowed to lift things like shopping bags after three months I was still quite weary as my chest was still quite sore. At this moment I have no chest pain at all. I can't quite pinpoint when it stopped hurting I just know that it doesn't hurt anymore! Which is great. It means I can now sleep on my stomach again! This might not seem like a big deal but I slept on my back for three months, propped up with pillows for the first couple because it hurt to lay flat. I gradually started sleeping on my side for parts of the night but my chest would be sore every morning when I woke up. So, I was only taking paracetemol first thing in the morning when I woke because it...

19.06.2018 Before you leave the hospital after transplant, the physio team refer you to your nearest cardiac rehab centre. Mine is Northwich infirmary which is great because it's actually walkable from my house! It took about 8 weeks for my referal which worked out fine because it meant I had a couple of months to recover and by the time I went to my first appointment I barely had any pain and my bone should have been healed because I was 3 months post op. My first appointment was an assessment, so they went through my medication (her little box for meds was no where near big enough!), took my pulse and blood pressure and they had my echo scan from the hospital too so they can work out from my heart function what my heart rate should be when I exercise. When you have a transplant they cut through the nerve from your brain to your heart, so my brain can't tell my heart to speed up and slow down. Therefore my resting heart rate is about 111bpm, and I also can't judge...

Trip to Ireland! 27.04.18 Whilst I was on the ward, I got the all clear from my consultant to fly to Ireland for my dad's wedding! He's getting married in Ireland so I wasn't sure if I'd be able to go, or if I'd have to get the ferry, but I was told I was fine to fly!  I had to be really organised with my pills, I had a set in my suitcase as well as my hand luggage. I thought I'd need a note to take all my pills in my hand luggage but no one at the airport even questioned them, but I brought my prescription list just in case! I had to book travel insurance in case I was ill while I was away but also because I had a biopsy the Monday before I went away, I wanted to make sure that if I was admitted and had to cancel my flights and things that I'd be covered. The Heart Transplant Facebook group that I'm on is really good for recommendations on travel insurance. The company that was suggested was All Clear but they wouldn't cover me after I fill...

21.04.18 Off to London again!! The last time I was in London was just before my transplant and it took soooo long for me to get from the platform into the station, I had to stop several times and it was reslly painful. It was so incredible to walk up the platform and feel no pain just over a month later! Saturday We arrived on Saturday and I spent the day on Oxford street with Victoria, but we got off the bus at the wrong end! So instead of being near Selfridges we were right up the other end. But it was too hot to shop anyway, we sat in a nice park for lunch and then Victoria headed off to meet the rest of my family. Because my immune system is so weak, the tube is not the best place for me, so luckily I have family that live in Paddington and I got the bus to stay with them. It took me forever to get to the bus because it was right down the other end of Oxford street, for anyone who doesn't know, Oxford street is 1.2 miles long! Although my legs were shattered I was...

So this weekend I'm very excited for my plans! Saturday night Emily, Jayne and Victoria are coming round for facials and to have our hair done and have a girly night in! And then on Sunday Ciaran's boss has arranged for us to go to the Manchester United game in a hospitality suite which is so kind! I love going to Old Trafford and the weekend before my op me and Ciaran went to the United v Chelsea game and I did mention to Ciaran that I'd love to be able to sit down (because our tickets are in Stretford end we stand up all game). However, on Saturday I woke up at 4am with an intense pain in my rib underneath my boob on the left hand side. I've been having stabbing pains from the pacing wires as I've mentioned but this was far more intense and more of a dull pain. I couldn't breath because it hurt so much when I breathed in and I couldn't get back to sleep. So I phoned the Jim Quick ward at 8am when the day staff start and spoke to one of the sisters and sh...

WARNING: This blog contains photos of scars and bruises at the end. Wednesday 4th April I went for my first echo today since transplant! So I was at the clinic for 9am, you can't take your medicine in the morning when you go to clinic because they do your bloods and they test the level of anti rejections in your blood so they ask what time you took my medicine the night before and then once you've had bloods done you can take your morning medicines. They were running behind with biopsies so after having my bloods done I went to echo, echos are done in the heart failure clinic, not the transplant clinic, its just in the next building. Very strange walking back into the heart failure clinic, this is where I first met Steve Shaw a year ago and he said 'we'll see you in 6 months' until he changed his mind and sent me for another exercise test. I'm a bit nervous about having an echo because the pacing wires in my chest have been really hurting me recently so ...