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. Forget the luggage and run to the first taxi. We stumble off the plane, stampede down the steps and start sprinting toward the exit, thundering down the escalator. As we run past the baggage reclaim conveyor belt towards the exit, I see a familiar and totally unexpected face. Shirley, Stuart’s younger sister, is waiting there. The minute he heard about the call, our ridiculously generous, kind-hearted friend Gavin Levy had put Shirley on a plane from Cape Town to come and support us. There are many heartbreaking reasons (which I will share with you later) why Shirl is the perfect person to help guide and hold our family through this unfolding medical drama. I can’t believe she is standing there! She can see how frantic I am. “Go, go, you go!” she says. “Get to the hospital! I will bring the luggage.”
Kristi and I leave her waiting for our bags and tumble, wheezing (the altitude in Johannesburg is punishing when you first land), into the taxi. “Milpark Hospital,” I say. “Take us to Milpark Hospital, fast!” I explain breathlessly that my eldest daughter is being prepped for a lung transplant and I have to get there, fast! The driver looks horrified.
It is 4:30 pm and the road from the airport is thick with bumper-to-bumper traffic. This is normal in Johannesburg for this time of day but made worse because of the large storm and dark moody skies overhead. The driver radios into his office. “Central, central, come in. Switch off the tracking system,” he says. “I have an emergency.” And just like that our taxi driver switches on his hazard lights, pulls across into the yellow emergency lane on the far left of the four-lane highway, puts his hand on the hooter and floors it.
I phone Stuart. He speaks gently and quietly. I can hear he is near Jenna and trying to keep the mood calm and low-key. “She is nearly ready, Gabs,” he says, “but there is a minor delay with the delivery of organs. So that is good for you. Just get here safely. I think you’ll make it.”
Eight hours after the first phone call from Stuart, at about 5 pm, we skid to a stop in the drop-off zone right outside the Milpark Hospital entrance. Kristi and I scramble out of the taxi and run down the long passage that leads from the entrance hall towards the Surgical ICU. Down the stairs, to the left, through the double doors and down another passage right to the end and through the double no-entry glass doors at the back that read ISOLATION WARD. We push them open, there are nurses everywhere. Kristi reaches for my arm, we look each other straight in the eyes, stop for a moment, and take deep, deep breaths. In unspoken agreement we leave our frantic despair and fear in the passage and walk into Jen’s room calm and steady.
We all fall into each other’s arms. Relief at seeing Jen floods through me. I just want to hold her. Kristi and I perch on the edge of her hospital bed as she tells us in her gentle breathless voice all about the adventures of the day. But in true Jen fashion she wants to hear Kristi’s Plett Rage stories too, not just talk about “the call”. I am so grateful that James has been there for her. He makes her happy and he has taken a lot of the angst out of the day. Now he respectfully steps aside and allows Kristi and me our time with Jen. It is the first time I’ve heard Kristi talk for just about the entire day. I let the two sisters chat and giggle quietly, while I check in with Stuart and Lizzie on the side. They are ready, the medical team is ready. Her new lungs haven’t arrived yet, but they are on a plane (from where we don’t know) and on their way.
It is time. Time to get our Jen into surgery.
Everything we have been working so hard towards and waiting so hopefully for culminates in this moment. It is emotionally unfathomable, a moment in time so poignant and massive that you can’t possibly know how to deal with it, so you just do.
Now it’s time to say a pre-surgery goodbye. Stuart, Kristi, James, Lizzie and I walk next to Jen in her hospital bed, all holding her hands, as she is wheeled into the pre-surgery area. My heart is racing but my face is calm and encouraging, my voice gentle and considered. There is so much fear that can’t be shown. We all have our brave faces on.
We kiss and hug one last time. Jenna is looking straight up at me, smiling, a smile full of courage and hope. I stroke her soft velvet cheek and kiss it one last time before the nurses pull her bed away from me towards the double doors that read THEATRE. The bed bumps the doors open.
I call out, “See you on the other side, my love.”
Jenna calls back over her shoulder, “I’m not going to the other side, Mom.” She is smiling encouragingly as the doors close behind her.
Part 1
CHAPTER 1
Profound joy
Nothing could have prepared me for the profound joy of becoming a mother.
I come from a long line of formidable women, who moulded my life in ways that I wasn’t cognisant of until I became a mother myself. As a young girl, I remember visiting my great-grandmother and being grotesquely fascinated that anyone could live to be so old they literally looked like a walnut. She died of old age at 102, just one of many of the strong women in our lineage. Oma, my father’s mother, was saintly, strong and fearless. She cooked large pots of nutritious soup to deliver to the South African townships during the riots in the mid-’80s, and allowed me to eat large spoonfuls of raw cake mixture out of the bowl when we baked. I loved her nurturing energy. Granny, my mother’s mom, was a colourful character, in complete contrast to Oma. She ran a ballroom dancing studio and, in the 1950s, hosted a nightclub for “the ducktails” twice a week – to the horror of many at a time when most women didn’t work. She was glamorous, bold and feisty, and undoubtedly a better grandmother to me than mother
