She looks at him with those intelligent eyes and says, “I heard the landline and I knew, Dad, I just knew.”
My stomach lurches when I imagine what was going on in Jenna’s mind at that precise moment. She was under no illusions. This was her one and only chance at life … but she also knew that lung transplants are extremely complex, and that she was desperately sick. The truth was that she might not survive the transplant – but she couldn’t live without it. A terrible, gut-wrenching conundrum. For months she had been living in both expectant hope and terrible dread of this call. She had fought so hard for this miracle. Just a few weeks earlier, as we lay cuddled up together on her bed, she had turned to me and said, “Mom, one of the hardest parts is that I don’t know if I am preparing to live or preparing to die.”
And there it is, the ultimate gut-twisting paradox of hope and fear. She is 20, just 20 years old. This call is her ultimate chance at life, and yet it is so risky.
Getting Jenna safely to Johannesburg, within four hours, requires military precision. At this stage she is on high levels of supplemental oxygen and a 24-hour-a-day pump of volatile intravenous medication. She is too weak and compromised to walk, never mind travel in a commercial aircraft cabin. But we have a clear and well-thought-out plan, with every detail documented.
Except I am not there. Barrier number one. Stuart continues executing Operation O2 without me. He has no choice.
With her golden-red hair, large light green eyes, friendly face and calm comforting manner, my trusted friend, confidante and neighbour of 15 years, Mary has become an essential and life-affirming support system for me. She lives directly opposite our driveway and is one of the first people on the list to call. I wouldn’t have gone away with Kristi if Mary wasn’t on hand and available for the time I was away. Within minutes she arrives at the house to help. Stu desperately needs to continue with phone calls as he has much to arrange (including the small matter of a plane! The city of Johannesburg is a two-hour flight from the city of Cape Town), and so it is the trusted Mary who goes into Jen’s bedroom to be with her at a moment I always believed would be me. Jen, who in all the years Mary has known her to remain rational and full of smiles, is unusually anxious, but she keeps her tone calm.
“Jen,” she says, “we can’t control whatever is unfolding here today, but what we know for sure is that this is going to be one of the most interesting days of your life.”
Even at the most challenging of times Jenna’s intellect and curiosity are always at play, and this perspective appeals to her. Selfishly, I wish with all my heart that it had been me with Jen at that moment, but on reflection (apart from the fact that I can’t change it) I think that the severity and significance of the moment would have been harder for her to cope with if I had been there, because Jenna would have felt responsible for the full weight of my fear and I would have felt responsible for the full weight of hers.
Stuart continues systematically executing Operation O2 without me. He hits a second barrier almost immediately. Months and months ago, Jonathan Ackerman and his family, out of the goodness of their hearts, had promised that when the moment came they would help get Jen to Johannesburg. He phones Jonathan, who picks up right away, and explains quickly what is unfolding. The Ackerman jet which has been on standby all those months is currently away in Europe. So is the head pilot. Stuart returns to methodically making his way down the list … every plane and every pilot is not on the ground in Cape Town. He phones option after option, getting more and more determined with each call. Meanwhile, unbeknown to him, Jonathan is activating his network, asking just one question. “What jets are on the ground in Cape Town?” Within 15 minutes Stuart’s phone rings. The caller is the pilot of the owner of a jet, whose urgent call caught him in his swim-shorts just as he was about to get into the ocean at Bloubergstrand for a long paddle-ski with his co-pilot and best friend. This incredibly kind man – who we don’t even know – is giving us his jet to take Jenna to Johannesburg.
“We are on our way to the runway,” the pilot tells Stuart. “We will be ready and waiting in 20 minutes.”
Stuart is still talking on the phone when Jonathan pulls up in our driveway. It is a colleague of his who has made this happen. His two pilots have quite literally dumped their paddle-ski, grabbed their car keys and are driving to the private runway at Cape Town International Airport. We have a plane.
Nurse Lizzie arrives at the house. She has her own gate-opener and lets herself in. Originally from the UK, blonde, blue-eyed lovely Lizzie is in her late 20s. She is a fully qualified nurse and has a youthful, wise soul. Serendipitously, she found her way to us through a long-standing former work colleague of mine from my magazine days. For the past year, Lizzie and I have spent every morning together mixing and administering the medication (an intravenous vaso-dilator called Eproprostenol) that goes into Jenna’s right heart chamber via a medical pump and a port in her chest. The mixing – a precise 35-step sterile process – takes an hour and a half (well, we eventually got it down to an hour) and requires both of us to concentrate throughout and double-check accuracy for safety’s sake. While I am away with Kristi, Lizzie has been doing the mixing either on her own or with Stuart at her side, both of them clad in their gloves and masks. Lizzie had been about to leave for our house to do the day’s mixing when she got the call from Stuart to say we’ve got lungs. She now arrives packed, calm, ready to fly and help.
Lizzie busies herself immediately with the medical side of things, checking on Jen, closely watching her vitals, and cross-referencing our detailed lists to ensure that she and I have packed everything we need. We already have a bag packed and waiting in the drug den (Jen’s affectionate name for our mixing room) on standby, but she triple-checks it anyway to make sure it includes extra medication for emergencies and that nothing is missing. What if the organs don’t arrive in Johannesburg on time? What if Jen is all prepped and ready for surgery and it can’t go ahead for some reason? These are valid and real possibilities that will require extra supplies of her daily intravenous and oral medications.
While Lizzie bustles and preps, Jenna tells Queen and Mary what to pack for her. She is physically weak, and her breathlessness doesn’t allow for physical exertion of any kind, so she sits on her bed quietly while the team helps pack. The meds are one thing … but the transplant also means we will be in Johannesburg not just for surgery but for recovery, rehabilitation and post-transplant care. Once Jen is out, we will have to remain close to the hospital for a minimum of six months, maybe even a year. All of this has to be packed for and thought about in just 20 minutes. Apart from complex medications and digital equipment such as her laptop, iPod, cellphone, Kindle and digital photo album, Jen’s priorities are books, journals and soft comfortable clothing. She is also a stationery and toiletries junkie. Weeks and weeks later, when I unpack her belongings on the other side, it will be poignant to see what she thought she might need.
Sitting on her bed in her red dressing-gown and fluffy slippers, Jen is staring down the biggest moment of her life: massive surgery, a potentially lifesaving double lung transplant, and a move to Johannesburg away from everyone and everything she knows and loves. It will start in 15 minutes. She has time to send just one text, to her boyfriend James, and her two best friends Alex and Camilla. It says three words only …
“Lungs. Johannesburg. Now.”
The bags are packed
The gate opposite our home slides quietly open and Steve Berry reverses his large red Toyota into our driveway so that Jenna’s mobility scooter, additional oxygen cylinders for the flight, the fastidiously packed bulging bags of medication, plus all the luggage can be loaded into the back of his car. As the “Cape Town team” are mobilising, Jen’s besties, Camilla and Alex, arrive wide-eyed to say goodbye. Emotion-filled hugs, some difficult words of support and hope-filled anticipation linger in the air as Jen is carried to the car. A last check … they have everything – it is a mere 35 minutes since the first phone call from Angela, the transplant co-ordinator. But where is James?
Filled to capacity, the red SUV starts making its way up Bertha Avenue in the direction of the airport. As Steve is about to turn left, a silver Polo comes speeding towards him and screeches