George airport
Back up the coast on the Garden Route we, too, are speeding along a highway, but to George airport. Jillie, my serene Mother-Earth, fun-loving, lifelong friend, has her hazard lights flashing. She is concentrating hard, focusing on keeping us safe and me calm. The intention is to make the 10:45 am flight to Johannesburg. It’s going to be tight, but we can make it.
The phone rings. It’s Ian. He asks me to pass the phone to Jillie – strange, because she is driving, but he insists. Jillie listens. “Oh, okay. Okay, we will do that,” she says, slowing down. “I will call you from the airport.” She ends the call and lifts her foot slightly off the gas. Then she switches off the hazards and slows down to a normal pace. My heart quickens. What is she doing? This is a matter of life and death, we have to get there!
“Gabs, my Gabs, you are going to have to take a deep breath,” Jillie says. “There are currently no planes on the runway in George. A massive storm in Johannesburg has grounded them all. We will head to the airport anyway, but Ian says the next plane is only due in a few hours’ time.” I open my mouth, about to protest. “He’s checked the private planes too. There is nothing on the ground, my friend.” She reaches over with one hand to take mine. Kristi, sitting in the back, doesn’t say a word. Neither do I … there is too much to say. We drive the rest of the way to the airport in silence. Jillie is right – not a single plane in sight. If there had been, I might well have hijacked it. But there is not one single damn plane on that runway.
We make our way to the coffee shop and Jillie guides us to a table close to the window. She gently busies herself ordering tea to keep us calm. Jen loves tea … she has a poster in her bedroom that reads “Where there is tea there is hope”. We wait, and wait, and wait … I buy a fluffy monkey at the airport shop, I have no idea why, and I cling to it. I phone my mom and my dad. I phone some close friends to tell them we have lungs. And we wait. And we wait. And we wait.
Cape Town airport
The packed red SUV pulls up on the private runway at Cape Town International airport only 50 minutes after the first phone call has been made – a planning triumph – where a small jet and its two pilots, who are already preparing for take-off, are ready and waiting. The bags get loaded and James carries Jenna and her oxygen machine up the metal steps to settle her into her seat. Then he fetches the extra tanks and takes them on board. But he still can’t say goodbye to Jen. Even the pilot is choked up. The strapping young man looks at James, this fresh-faced 20-year-old trying to say goodbye to his gorgeous young girlfriend and says: “Stay, stay with your girl. We are turning this baby straight back towards Cape Town once we’ve offloaded everyone at Lanseria airport. We will ‘lift’ you home afterwards.”
And so, while Kristi and I desperately wait in George airport for a commercial plane, Stuart, Nurse Lizzie, Jenna and James take off in the small jet headed for Johannesburg, with Mary and Steve Berry and Jonathan Ackerman waving them goodbye from the runway.
Because it’s a private jet, Stuart is able to phone and update me on how Jen is until they reach a certain height. He continues making some necessary logistical calls for as long as he can, including a very important call to Raffaella Ruttell at Discovery Health, our medical health insurance provider. Jenna will need a helicopter and paramedics to get her from the airport, which is north of the city, to Milpark Hospital so that they don’t get stuck in the notorious Johannesburg traffic. Stu and Lizzie will follow in an ambulance. Raffaella and her team are on it, efficient and proactive. Operation O2 is not only operational, it is in full flight.
George airport
Phone calls ebb and flow between Stuart and me and still we wait. I am helpless, desperate, my stomach churns, adrenaline coursing. I just want to get to my child, but the mother of storms has other ideas. Kristi is still monosyllabic. One minute she was running with her pack, having a huge party with her boyfriend and her closest mates in Plett and the next she was plucked up and is now jetting her way to Johannesburg, where her sister (and best friend) is about to have massive and complex surgery. She also knows from all our research that the statistics for lung transplants with very sick pulmonary hypertension patients are not ideal.
I focus every bit of strength I have on staying calm and hopeful. This is our opportunity to save Jenna’s life, to buy her more time. I need to stay present, but it’s hard. It’s so hard. There have been very few times in the past 365 days when I have been more than 10 minutes from Jenna’s side. I have dedicated myself to taking care of her every need since the port was inserted into her chest on the 10th of December 2013 to start the 24-hour intravenous medication. And yet here I am, stuck at George airport as she wings her way towards a double lung transplant. I should be at her side! We have to get there, fast. I have to see her before surgery. I have to.
The first plane from George to OR Tambo leaves at 2:15 pm. 2:15 pm! We have been waiting for four hours, four of the longest, most conflicted and anxiety-filled hours of my life. Little do I know how many more of those waiting hours there are to come. Little do I know that this wait is just child’s play.
Finally, we are about to board our flight. I won’t be able to talk to anyone again while we are in the air, so I phone Stuart one last time.
“We’ve boarded, Stu, at last. We are on the plane, it’s about to take off. How is Jen? What stage are you at?”
Stu is at Milpark Hospital. “Jen had a really difficult time on the jet, my love,” he says. “Her oxygen saturation levels dropped dangerously low.” James had apparently held her on his lap like a baby. “But the helicopter was ready and waiting to take her straight to the hospital and there was a full complement of doctors and hospital management waiting to receive her. We got here only half an hour later in the ambulance, with all the stuff.”
We? Again, James and Jenna haven’t been able to say goodbye ... he goes to the hospital with Lizzie and Stu, still dressed in his gym kit.
Soothingly Stuart urges me yet again not to worry. “I’m sure there is still time. They are doing all sorts of tests prepping her for surgery at a slow and leisurely pace and the organs haven’t arrived in Johannesburg yet. Just get here safely, Gabs. We are waiting.”
I settle in for the longest flight of my life. I spend the two hours thinking about the donor family. Somewhere in South Africa, as I fly towards hope, another mother, another family, is mourning the loss of their beloved while giving mine a chance at life. What is that poor family going through? Who are they? We will never find out. In South Africa the law prohibits you from knowing who your donor family is. The organs can come from anyone – male or female, child or adult – as long as the biology of the tissue, blood type and size are a match. Jen is petite, so the chances are that it had to be someone light in build, with the same blood and tissue type, but we will never know who. I spend the flight sending gratitude and love out into the universe in the hope that some of it will shower down into that mother’s heart and ease some of her intense pain and loss.
While we are in flight, Jen is being stabilised and settled into the Isolation Ward, Section 7, where she will move once she is well enough to leave ICU post-surgery. James stays at her side all day, lying next to her on top of the hospital bedding (he’s not really allowed, but everyone turns a blind eye), talking to her and keeping her distracted and entertained, chatting to friends on her mobile, while Stuart signs multiple forms, completes the paperwork, and has a tour of the hospital. Lizzie manages other medical logistics such as Jenna’s pump and changing of medication and ice-packs. Even though Jen is now in a first-class hospital, there is still no one other than Lizzie and I who know how to mix and administer her meds. In 2014, Jenna is the first person in Africa to be on this medication.
Johannesburg airport
At 4:20 pm Kristi and I land at OR Tambo in Johannesburg. We have a plan – run.