Transplant day

2 years ago at this moment I was awake...waiting for the morning and the NICU to call to say Sage had been matched and what the OR time was for surgery. I sat and waited....I think I was as anxious as the recipients' moms were. We were at the end of our journey...our 6 day expedition through organ donation and trying to do right by our daughter. The events of that day are time stamped in my mind and I just hope they go by smoothly this year.

This is a special day for the recipient families as well....I keep in touch with the liver recipient family.....their daughter did not make it...after a year and another transplant she lost the fight. The heart recipient's family has maintained silence...I try not to let it make me sad. I know he is doing well and get updates sporadically from the transplant hospital. I wish they would say something though.....

Happy birthday Sage

At 816 tonight Sage turned 2. Instead of chasing a squealing dark headed girl down the hall we handed a bag of clothes and baby dvd's to the manager of the NICU where she stayed while here. Instead of cleaning up cake crumbs from a nonstop jabbering mouth, I scrubbed blackbeans and rice from the pot in which I cooked dinner. Instead of holding my toddler girl I light a candle in her name and wish she were here. Happy birthday my baby girl...my Sage. I bought you a party outfit in just your size...I will keep it safe just in case you decide to send another sister our way.

Her birthday...and her last day approaches

Sage's tree is blooming..sweet pink and yellow flowers...5 more days until her second birthday. 11 more days until her second anniversary of the last day I held her. It seems more and more like a dream....sometimes I don't even think it happened to me...to us...then I get a flashback and WHAM...it is right there again. The screaming...the ambulance ride and my midwife with her hand up inside trying to keep her head off her cord....the surgical suite with the anethesiologist forcing a mask over my face with no air in it and me shoving him away....the team yelling at me to push when I had nothing to put my feet into for leverage...the sound of cpr being performed on my little girl...still warm and pink but already flown from this world...The cocky doctor saying to give me Versed "she doesn't need to remember this"...the sound of the trauma helicopter coming to take Sage to another hospital...then the smell of betadyne...the smells of the NICU....the sights of the smallest ones struggling and thanking all the gods that my girl was spared that fate....she was perfect...still...warm...pink...but gone...so very very gone. These memories flash back to me every day like a smack in the face just for an instant and then gone...then they return again and again....I change the radio station, TV station, web page...I hum a tune...I walk in a circle...I rub my pendant I've worn ever since and try to ward them off....I cram my life full of thoughts and worries and good memories trying to drown them out but still they come...slowly at first when the weather turns colder building up to a barrage. It will suck for the next few days...weeks...and then they will recede like the tide...I will be left again with faint images and occasional skipped heart beats until next year...when the air turns cold, her tree blooms again, and her movie starts to play once more in my mind.