The road goes ever on and on. It has taken almost 10 years of journeying to get to this place. After years of various mysterious and uncommon health issues, after two open heart surgeries and recoveries together (after 4 others as a child), after a cross country med-jet flight, after 4 different specialized medical centers, after over a dozen near death experiences (we stopped counting after we hit 13), after countless miles on the road, after hours on planes, after weeks in and out of hospitals and video calls with our kids in different cities, after so many sob fests with the kids when we came home, after so much financial drain, after so much uncertainty, after so much fear, after so much logistics juggling, after so much trauma, after so many hours of therapy, after so many nights spent hoping and willing him to stay alive, to get through this night, after so many days and nights he doesn’t remember, after so many months dealing unknowingly with encephalopathy and all the Jekyll & Hyde-ing and fog and exhaustion it entails, after so many times trying to pick him up off the floor or catch him before he gets there, after so many ambulance rides, after 3 intense time and energy consuming double heart-liver transplant evaluations, after so much worrying about our kids and how this affects them, after so much mourning for what could have been, after so much bad news, after so many many tears, 

after so many many laughs, after so many hugs, after so many kisses, after so much community support, after so many relationships and connections forged, after so many friends, after all the texts and phone calls with sympathetic ears and hearts, after so many audiobooks on the road, after millions of our words read by friends and strangers, after feeling heard, after feeling brave, after learning so much about the human body, after joking with all the medical staff, after so many times answering “no, I’m not in medicine, I’m just a nerd who studies,” after so many laps around the floor, after so many smiles, after so many new kind faces, after so much good news, after so much adventure, after so much joy, after looking down the infinite distance of this road, we are here. Andy has finally been accepted and listed at Vanderbilt for a double heart-liver transplant! 

It was a very strange experience getting the news. We’d been at the hospital for a couple of weeks while they finished everything up. Much Hallmark channel and Murder She Wrote was watched. We were hopeful, but were also prepared for a “no” because we’ve been in that situation before. The welcome answer was given with little fanfare, just a happy smile from a transplant team member. While it was a relief and some of the best news we’ve had in a very long time, I didn’t feel how I thought I would. I wasn’t elated. I wasn’t suffused with joy and light. I was happy, yes. I was given hope, yes. But in many ways it just felt like a checkpoint was passed instead of any kind of destination achieved. There was a fistbump of celebration between Andy and me. 

And there was a falling away of all the plans and logistics and preparedness I had to keep holding in case the answer hadn’t gone in our favor. I didn’t feel like a weight had lifted, though. Because there was so much else waiting to fill that place. So much to keep going. And I’m sure trauma and being in emergency logistic planning mode is playing a part in all of this. I’m in go mode and it is hard to get out of go mode for any amount of time when you know you have to slide back into it if you pause. Feeling any kind of feels makes me start to cry. I’m used to crying so I don’t try to stop the feels, but I also don’t seek them out right now. Even writing things like this I have to pause and take a breath so I’m not sobbing in a coffee shop. It has been such a strange week sitting with these not feelings. I’m accepting it because there isn’t a “correct” way to react to something. And there are moments where I think about it and I can breathe a little easier. The hope feels closer than it has in a long time. See, there’s one of those sentences that makes me tear up. 

This is all good things. This will all continue to be good things. There is so much to look forward to. But there is also so much left to do. I told Andy it feels like we just got to Rivendell. But there are still so many $%*#& orcs in between here and victory. And so many adventures before we get to go back to the Shire.