MONDAY MORNING MUSING AND MEDICATION

Good Morning and welcome to Monday in my little corner of the world where the sun is shining and the sky is blue and we are experiencing a flush of warm days before Mother Nature packs her summer clothes away and dons her autumn gowns.   It is truly a lovely day and far too nice to be inside, so I have been sitting outside in the warmth and in the shade, having lunch and sorting my medication for the coming week.

Pictured above is a complete weeks array of the medications I take and I like the feelings I get when this is done and I am prepared and ready for the coming week - ready to take the day's medication with me in my handbag or the whole week if I am going any great distance from home.  I always have a good supply at home so there is never a panic to rush to the Pharmacy and it should come as no surprise that I am on first name terms with the Pharmacist and the girls who work there and often have a chat.

I am thankful for these medications, for the skills of the people who worked and researched and came up with the idea of preventing rejection.    Or indeed discovered that there was a problem with a body rejecting a transplanted organ.

I recall the first heart transplant in Cape Town, South Africa in 1967 (yes I'm that old) by Dr. Christian Barnard.   He performed the world's first human heart transplant operation on 3 December 1967, in an operation assisted by his brother, Marius Barnard; the operation lasted nine hours and used a team of thirty people. The patient, Louis Washkansky, was a 54-year-old grocer, suffering from diabetes and incurable heart disease.  Louis Washkansky died 18 days later from complications due to a suppressed immune system.

The first liver transplant took place in 1963 in Denver Colorado, USA and I was number 194 to receive a transplant at Flinders Medical Centre in South Australia  and I am thankful for the improvements and skills of modern day Surgeons and Doctors.    I take my medication automatically and without fail, it is keeping me alive and for that I am thankful.

I know other transplant recipients who are are more and different medications and it is rather like "horses for courses" in finding what works for each patient and there is generally much adjustment during the early days to get it "just right"   Taking it all becomes part of the "new normal" and is just a part of LIFE -  it becomes rather like breathing - you just do it because you do.

I am going to finish this blog and then sit outside again in the warmth of the day and write some letters,  - pen to paper and I love it.   I know the staff at the Post Office rather well and they are joyful happy souls.

I am thankful for so many things - for the joy of just breathing in and out and for the solitude of long autumn days, for friends and family and those who visit here.   I am waiting for some beading supplies to arrive and then I have a project to work on and I am really looking forward to that.   Narelle did a class on Saturday and did beautiful work and I admire it very much but lots of tiny tiny beads would have made my eyes sore I think.   We are planning another class very soon and I shall look forward to that.

We had our movie afternoon yesterday and saw "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" with Judy Dench and Maggie Smith and both were wonderful ~ a delightful film, filled with delicious humour and a sensitive story about the joys of aging.   I would recommend it ~ and will probably go to see it again.

Thank you for visiting the Musings of My Heart ~ a heart filled with wonder at the advances in medicine and surgery over the years.

Love and hugs,

Linda.