Hello!
If you're reading this, there is a good chance you've come from one of my social media pages and probably already know a little or maybe even a lot about me. For anyone else let me introduce myself.
I'm Marissa! I'm currently 27 years old and a few years ago (September 2nd, 2016) I received a double lung transplant. I'll make a whole write up explaining my transplant process and how things happened and be back with a link for it shortly. It was a crazy ride!
Now though I'm back in the midst of lung failure and working for a second transplant. I'm really hoping to have it done at the University of Michigan, the same hospital that did my first but I really won't know until we get deeper into the evaluation process. Speaking of the transplant evaluation, they're started next week! Thursday August 1st to be exact! It wasn't originally scheduled until mid September but they switched it up on me.
And that is part of the reason I wanted to re-start this blog. I was going to make a new one from scratch, with a new name all geared towards transplant #2 but I decided against that.
As you can see this blog page hasn't been used since before I received lungs, but I think what I wrote here is still important. Hopefully we'll be able to see my writing progress and get better as we go along too (fingers crossed on that).
I want this to be about more than just my second transplant process. My first transplant wasn't very typical so a lot of the things that happened have caused some serious mental health changes in my life and I really want to talk about how I react to them even now 2.5 years later.
There are also a lot of sensitive subjects I want to discuss about the process. My illness progressed so fast that one week I had plans with friends but I had to let them know that doctors didn't expect me to live that long. These are going to be sensitive subjects that you never really know how you'll handle until you're in that situation, but I can at least guide you through my thought process and how I handled everything.
I also plan on discussing the negatives that have come from my transplant. It's something I don't see discussed enough and I think a lot of that stems from people not wanting to seem ungrateful. Openly and honestly discussing the hard and difficult parts of the transplant process pre and post does not make you ungrateful. Sure, we wouldn't be here without our donors, but we're also humans who still have good and bad days.
If you're out there and you ever need someone to talk to, don't be lonely! I'm here for you!
Well wish me luck!
Marissa Parks
