I haven’t posted in a while and this is why…

It started with his being short of breath four years ago. Little things like going to the mailbox or going upstairs became challenging. I watched as my husband and best friend of over twenty years went from being an active, boisterous guy who loved traveling to barely being able to go down the driveway to take out the trash. Two years ago, he went on oxygen 24/7 and we found out that he has pulmonary fibrosis. It is an incurable, progressive disease that constricts the lungs, eventually necessitating a lung transplant.

He has been in the ICU for two months now. It is day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. It has been so very hard, but all that I can do is be positive and hope for him to get stronger and receive the gift of a new pair of lungs so that he can come home to me and our two little boys.

Despite it all, I am completing my thesis now and will be done with my MA in Historic Preservation by late September. He’s been my biggest cheerleader and so supportive of my studies and preservation work (or “building geekery,” as he calls it in jest). It is important to him that I focus and keep on and make sure that I finish. And hopefully, next summer, he’ll be there to see me walk. He believes that I will be a great preservationist and force to be reckoned with someday. I’d like to prove him right.

UPDATE (1/24/17): After 6 months in the hospital, my husband finally came home in November after he received a healthy new pair of lungs. His recovery’s been a little slower due to how sick he was and he’ll be prone to rejection episodes, but he is doing well and the boys and I are glad to have him back home again!

For more info about idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, check out this info from the Lung Association. You can also learn more about becoming an organ donor and giving another family hope for their future.