I’m Devon Hack, living with Cystic Fibrosis and lung transplant

On July 24th, the call came in while I was having breakfast with friends at Smitty’s. There was so much information and changes from what we thought we were dealing with. Once Covid-19 shut down the hospitals and that there was an outbreak in one of the hospitals in Edmonton, we were told that my wife Stacey would not be allowed into the hospital with me. This was changed just one day before we recieved the call.

Once at the hospital, after a journey on the air ambulance where we took no pictures. I can’t believe we completely forgot to take pictures. We waited to find out if the surgery would be Thursday night or Friday morning. The surgeon decided Friday morning would be better. It is absolutely amazing what they can do with lungs to prepare them for transplant.

Interestingly enough both my wife and I slept well that night.  A nurse helped my wife find a place to stay that was walking distance to the hospital. And I met my surgical team.  Most seemed to be ninjas at avoiding getting their pictures taken but I did get my head surgeon, Dr. Laing, whom I think did a fabulous job.

The recovery, well a previous transplant patient warned me that I would wake up in the most pain I have ever felt.  I don’t think I was still really prepared for what this would feel like.  When my pain manager talked about whether or not she would be able to give me enough medication safely to get to the point of handling the pain.

I still think I did well.  They removed the air pipe the night of the surgery.  I didn’t handle the pain too well so they put me back under.  In the morning, I was handling it a bit better.  I don’t remember very much about being in ICU or all the people that helped me.

The next 10 days of healing in the hospital was helped with wonderful nurses and doctors whom dealt with everything swiftly, came by every day to check and adjust.  Were great at laughing at my crazy jokes.  The staff who cared so much that they started to chastise me on my eating.  Whom came in and cleaned regularly.

One new piece that I had to deal with was anxiety for the first time.  I had never felt it before and really didn’t know what to think about how this was going.  One nurse helped by explaining that I needed to heal and to heal I need to sleep and so I need to take the necessary pain meds and anxiety medication to do so.  Also, that everything for the last number of years had been leading up to this moment but we hadn’t planned for after.  So, now the world was wide open and I didn’t have a plan.  Another piece of advice from a nurse was the following.