Victorious - a Column by Brad Dell

September 2016 Every bone, tooth, and vein in my body trembled. The oxygen cannula hugging my nostrils slipped on sweat. I sat at a cold table with my pre-transplant coordinator who’d subjected me to a presentation that vividly, gruesomely, described the lung transplant process.

July 28, 1 p.m. We’re laughing. Some of us literally poured blood, sweat, and tears to be there laughing. Transplant recipients, like me. Others thought they’d never see their loved ones laugh again, much less years later. Caregivers. Others doubted they’d ever laugh again after they lost the…

One year ago, I was six months post-lung transplant. I was still fumbling about, trying to sort out my new body and aspirations to help other CFers with my second chance at life. I didn’t know how to inspire others to strength if I could barely walk. I…

“Living On a Prayer” played as I pulled into an intersection. From the corner of my eye, I saw a car dart onto my street. A screech and a smash. T-boned, rammed into my driver door. Shrapnel-like glass blasted through the air, trimming a sliver of flesh from my…

“It’s all come full circle,” I repeated, rather exhaustingly, about two dozen times over the past two weeks when visiting family in Florida. Exactly two years ago, my family learned we’d have to leave Hawaii, my home for 12 years, to get my lung transplant at the University…

On July 2, 2016, I awoke from a nightmare with a wheeze. In the movies, people awaken from nightmares with a gasp. But gasping takes air. I’d been suffocating for days. Days of tripping through a horrific hallucination that may sound funny, but only if you didn’t live…

Part two of a series. Read part one. Last week, I wrote about how disheartened I felt that many lung transplant centers refuse to help cystic fibrosis patients with Mycobacterium abscessus complex (Myco Ab), which is a species of nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM). Myco Ab makes transplant…

At some point in the eighth grade in 2008, I drank some bad water. Later, I vomited and some of that yuck liquid aspirated into my lungs. That invasion carried with it a battalion of crack marines, nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM), to join the well-weathered forces…

After 37 hours of travel, I landed in Belgrade, Serbia. I hopped in a cab and rolled past rows of rusted relics — airplanes of various centuries, including the rotting wreckages of NATO planes that once carried disastrous payloads during the ruinous Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s.

I’m flyin’ high. Or maybe flyin’ buzzed. My transplant docs say “drink only in moderation,” and I am, smuggling sips via a straw tucked into my N99 mask. It’s a pathetically tiny plastic cup of white wine, but evidently, I can’t handle much. Don’t judge. I know people…