"Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it." – Helen Keller
I took my medication today at 10:30 AM instead of 8:45 AM. I usually sleep in on Saturdays,and when I woke up, I realized my alarm didn’t go off. My alarm was set for 8:30 AM on WEEKDAYS.
I’m really slacking off, geez. First February 5, 2019, and now today. I’m going to be more strict.
Today I had another personal training lesson, and boy, we worked hard! It was a lot more than last week.
I didn’t do anything to practice since there wasn’t a lot to practice, so I did kind of horribly today.
Compared to January 26, 2019, we worked a lot harder. First we started with lunges, which killed me. Then I did jump squats, which was super hard with my already weak knees.
I swear my heartbeat raised to 150. My heart was working so hard that I could hear it, similar to the heart pounding sensation I experienced right after transplant.
My personal trainer taught me an exercise to do with a ball, some more exercises on the TRX machine, and how to use my core. My core is really bad, so I hope we don’t focus too much on it.
I haven’t posted much lately for the entire month of February, and I’m sorry about that.
I’m going to be real honest here, I kinda forgot about this blog. I know that sounds bad, but if you think about it, it’s actually good.
It means that I don’t think of my heart transplant much anymore.
And that’s great!
At the beginning of the school year, I remember thinking about my heart all day at school. Walking through the hallways, taking notes, and eating lunch, all I thought was, “Heart transplant, heart transplant, heart transplant.”
Heart transplant used to be my life, but now it’s not.
Now that I have a life, everything’s back to “normal”. I know I can’t be completely “normal” again, but maybe I can be semi-”normal”.
Today I had another personal trainer lesson.
We started off with lunges. He complimented my lunges, saying that they’re better. He said, “I can see you worked on them.”
He’s right, I have been working on my lunges. When I came to practice, I completely forget everything we did two weeks ago and only remembered the lunges. So for four days I worked on just lunges.
Then it was jumpsquates. Then lunges. I repeated this process three times before I stopped to do push ups and core exercises. My core is really bad. After that we repeated that process again.
Today’s workout was probably the hardest workout ever. It has to due with the fact since it’s a lot of high intensity cardio. My heart was pounding so hard that I could hear it. I wonder if this is normal?
Today was another Pink Dot Club meeting. In case you didn’t know, the Pink Dot Club is the organ transplant club at school.
They announced a competition. Apparently if you do things to promote organ donation, then you get points. The club with more points wins.
I don’t know why, but thinking about the competition made me sad. No matter what Donate Life wants us to do, no one really cares.
Maddy wants our group to make posters, but a thousand people could pass our poster every day, and not even know it. Unless it actually touches them, no one will become an organ donor.
Even though it’s Wednesday (and not Tuesday), the Pink Dot Club met today during lunch. There was a guest speaker, and we got to meet him.
His name is Rob Floss, and he had a heart and kidney transplant! That’s crazy, a double transplant!
I can’t imagine the pain he’s gone through. First a heart, then he goes under the knife again for a kidney.
He has type one diabetes. If you don’t know, type one diabetes is the type of diabetes you get as a kid. It’s not his fault that he got type one diabetes. Eventually his diabetes got out of control, which is also not his fault. He’s old, so it was back in the time without regular insulin tests and constant insulin pumps.
First, he had kidney failure. He eventually got a match and a relative willing to give up a kidney for him. Then, he had heart failure. He had to wait for a heart transplant until he could have a kidney transplant.
I asked, “What do you do to stay healthy?” and he said, “Happiness is the best health.”
… okay
He was more concerned with my donor’s family than my story, which I thought was different.
I mean, the patient’s story is so interesting! But then I realized he was from Donate Life and was trying to sign up Organ Donors.
Anyways, I have his number now. I might text him to see how I can get this blog affiliated with Donate Life.
Today is daylight savings time, which means the clock is turned forward an hour. Honestly? It kinda sucks.
When dealing with medication (especially immunosuppressants) that have to be timely, turning the clocks can confuse us. For example, if I took my medication at the usual 8:45 AM, then I’d be one hour early.
My biology doesn’t follow the American government. It won’t automatically sped up dissection of medication by one hour so it can keep up with daylight savings.
It’s a little tedious, and frankly dangerous for people with medications. One missed dose or extra dose of medication can mean severe consequences, and that’s REALLY bad.
Anyways, this is just my reminder to everyone with medications, remember to plan it out!
Today I had another swimming lesson with my coach. She told me that my backstroke has gotten a lot better than before. It’s cool how far I’ve come.
Daylight savings returned on Sunday, and the clock is turned an hour forward. The sun shines brighter when I walk to school, and that means I should start reapplying sunscreen onto my face.
After a heart transplant, you’re at a higher risk for skin cancer with exposure to the sun, and that means… cancer. I’ve had enough of hospital stuff, and I think it’d be pretty dumb going back to the hospital infected with a preventable disease.
In the fall I got away with hiding the sun from my face with a hoodie, but now that won’t cut it. I got lazy with applying sunscreen because it also hurts. I try really hard to keep the sunscreen out of my eyes, but it always seems to get inside there, and my eyes will hurt for the rest of the day.
However, skin cancer is no light deal, so I just gotta suck it and deal with it. It’s okay, skin cancer would be really bad, so I don’t want that. Also, I’ve added a sunscreen stick in my backpack for when the 80 minutes run out.
Today I felt sick in Chemistry so I left school early. Before I left, I had to check in with the school nurse.
I was in between going home or staying at school, so I asked the nurse for her opinion.
I couldn’t believe how ignorant the nurse was. She told me, “It’s not a matter of whether or not you should stay at school, it’s a matter of whether or not you can make it through the school day.”
No, it’s a matter of whether I should stay at school, or not.
She knows about my heart transplant: I saw her pull my health record up on the school website. She should know that I’m more prone to infections, and that I need to be cautious while sick.