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The healing power of Starbucks




(Note: actually posting this a few days later.)

Yesterday it was one year and six months since my single lung transplant. In some ways it feels like yesterday, and in other ways it feels like so long ago.

In the beginning, post transplant time starts to take on strange properties. It feels like everything moves so slow. You move slow. You think slow. Everything seems complicated and foreign. You’re so anxious to get your life back. You’ve got all these things you were looking forward to doing after your transplant and it feels like you’ll never get there. There are still things on my post transplant wish list that physically I can’t do, but even now, even a year and a half later, I’m still making progress. There were some complications that slowed things down early on – although my team probably wouldn’t put it that way. They’d tell me to quit comparing my recovery to anyone else; we’re all different and there isn’t a schedule to this. Okie Dokie. Got it – NOT. I’m not wired that way. Grin!

I have savored even small mile stones. I think about a week and a half, maybe two, post transplant the doctors told my dad he could bring me a Starbucks. No ice etc. etc. etc……but I could have a hot latte. Mentally it was a turning point. It was one of the first parts of my “normal” that I reclaimed. It was a sign things were getting better…we were moving forward and discharge might actually be in sight.

I was on a kind of germ house arrest for the first four months post transplant. My new lung was high risk, and sure enough it came with three infections. It took some extra work in the beginning to deal with that. When I finally got out of what I dubbed, “germ jail” one of my first destinations to celebrate was Starbucks. I do my best thinking in the shower and at coffee places. (Maybe TMI?) It was truly exciting to get to go have a latte! It felt normal!

Getting a latte on or about the 19th of every month became a kind of tradition for me. It’s a chance to remember I made it another month. It’s a way of marking moving forward, sometimes even when things felt like they were moving backwards.

So, here’s to a year and six months – bottom’s up!
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