Danny is my hero.

My beautiful, wise, wonderful, awesome, amazing son made possibly the hardest decision he has ever had to make in his life so far.  A heart became available yesterday.  We rushed down to the hospital to get the blood test that would tell us if it was a good match.  We waited 4 hours, sitting in the room watching the minutes tick by....  When the surgeon, THE MAN, walked into the room to give us the news we were, of course, ready for "OK, let's do it."  I knew the second I looked into his eyes it wasn't going to be that quick.  

The donor was not a perfect match but it would work IF Danny wanted to go ahead with the transplant as long as he realized the chance of rejection was right around the corner.  But there is no crystal ball in life so it was totally up to Danny.  Dr. Vega has never encountered an "almost" perfect heart before. He left for a few minutes and we tried to talk together.  We instead cried together, silently.  It almost felt like we had lost Mary again.  He looked at me with those big brown eyes and said "what do I do".  I knew he didn't want to let me down.  I squeaked out what I've said to myself since all my children turned 18.  "It's your life, your decision."   It felt like such a cop out.  I tried to hard to talk myself into saying "Every day is a risk.  He could get hit by a drunk driver leaving the hospital."   Kerry said what we all knew needed to be said, "I'd wait if it was me but then I'm not sitting in that bed."

He said he'd wait. And then cried a few tears, ripped off his heart monitor, and said "let's get outta here."  Dr. Vega was very kind.  Danny and I had asked him all the questions we could, most he couldn't answer because those are the kinds of questions you ask when you are reaching for a miracle.

There is so much more that went into that 15 minutes of decision making that I can't put into words.   If I had talked him into going on and then he started rejecting and I lost him, I would probably have died with him.  I told him I would have made the very same decision if he had been a child.  Probably didn't help much.

At least the National League team won last night. They haven't won since Danny got his first heart.  Wouldn't that have been something, they wouldn't have started winning the night he got his heart.  Oh well.......