The call

So on saturday Natalia got the call that the lungs came in. It was incredible and it didn't seem real at all. Martin called me and we cried on the phone because the call came just in time. When I saw Martin's name on my phone, I didn't think it was good news, I actually thought he was calling for us to meet the surgeons about the living donor option. We were ready to do this, and even though there is no choice to make, it is a difficult thing to wrap your head around. But it never got to this because a donor was found. Once we got the call the lungs were assessed to make sdure they are viable for transplant and this was a very nervous time since it was so close, but it could be just a false alarm. It wasn't. The surgery started early evening and took about 10 hours. We were told that it went reasonably well but that she wasn't out of the woods just yet. I will leave the technical details to Natalia's blog at www.natandmarty.blogspot.com which is updated by a great family friend, Myles.

So over the next day we waited patiently at Natalia and Martin's house, letting the new additions to the family (scarlett and sophie) distract us from the severity of natalia's conditon and the craziness of the last number of months. But things are stable and condition has slowly been moving in the right direction and the donor lungs are working great and Natalia is breathing with them. What still blows me away is that she doesn't have CF in those lungs.... 30 years of that horrible disease have been removed.

So that's the update, but I also would like to say thank you to all donor families out there. It is the most incredible gift of all time, but one that requires someone's father, mother, daughter to pass. It makes me cry thinking about the hell another family must have gone through in order for someone on the a waiting list to have another chance at life. There are more than 4000 others like Natalia waiting to continue their lives and their lives could be changed by the extraordinary act of being an organ donor.

Thanks.
John (Natalia's brother)

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