Timeline of events

I thought I would put a timeline of how things went on the day of Pam's surgery. I feel funny calling her Pam because a lot of the close family call her Wilbur, and others call her Lu or Lu-Lu. So you'll know who I mean if I call her anything other than Pam. So on July 1st 2010 she got the call for her double lung transplant. She was already in the hospital at Duke for a tune-up as she calls it. She sent me a message that day and told me she got the call. I couldn't wait to get off work to try to talk to her before surgery. I was so excited when I found out she wasn't in surgery yet. We chat all the time on Blackberry messenger, but I wanted to hear her voice. Honestly not knowing if it would be the last time, even though I couldn't bring myself to say those words at that time. So we talked for about five minutes, and I was peppering her with questions about how she felt, what was going on, etc. She was so calm. She said she was nervous earlier but had gotten over it. We both figured her nerves would kick back in as she was being wheeled into surgery. I told her we'd be in touch with Philip and would see her soon because we had already planned a trip up there that weekend. I told her I loved her and she said she loved us too and to "Kiss her baby for her." She always says that about our son Joey.

So here's the time and text messages that I received from Philip. I forwarded them on to a list of people and put an update on Facebook each time.

July 1st
3:15pm-Checking in for surgery

4:16pm- Took her back to surgery

6:09pm- Philip called me. He said he'd just talked to the dr. Her heart stopped while they were trying to put her under anesthesia. For a moment I thought he was calling to tell me my sister had died. He caught his breath and said that they got her back and the dr. was trying to decide whether or not to even continue with the surgery. At this point they hadn't even made an incision. They also said they weren't sure how her brain would be affected from coding. I had to call our Mama and tell her. That was hard. She held it together while we talked, but she later admitted that she fell apart after we got off the phone.

8:11pm-Everything going as expected

11:36pm-She is out of surgery and doing good. We will know more when she wakes up.

July 2nd
3:29am-I just got to go back and see Lu. She looked good and the nurse said all vitals and everything looked good!! Please keep praying!

3:39am-You can call ICU and check on her. Her nurse is Katie tonight till about 6am.

We talked some in between these times. She was doing good. So far so good. At some point they hooked her to a machine that checks brain activity and they said it looked just fine. What a huge relief!! I had already convinced myself that would be fine. It's not like she wasn't receiving oxygen when she coded.

6:47pm-Lu is doing real good! She is awake, breathing on her own, with no oxygen just room air! They are going to try and take her breathing tube out tonight.

7:59pm-Ya'll aren't going to believe how good she looks!

July 3rd
12:28am- Breathing tube is OUT!!!!!

12:46am- I thank you all for all your thoughts and prayers!!! I really believe that they helped her get this far!! They sure helped me get thru it so far! THANK YALL!

12:19pm- Lu is sitting up in a chair and walking!!

2:06pm-Taking out chest tubes and moving out of ICU!!

7:42pm-She is gonna stay in icu one more nite

That's the last text I got because we had made it to NC by this time. We checked into our hotel Saturday night. I was so anxious to get to the hospital Sunday morning!!