I recently spoke to Dr. Heidi Engel, the physical therapist who directed my mom’s pulmonary rehabilitation while she was…
Christie Patient
In 2019 Christie Patient relocated to San Francisco to care for her mother, Holly, before and after her double-lung transplant. Holly’s idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis diagnosis came only months before an acute exacerbation that led to a four-month stay in the intensive care unit, and her eventual transplant. Years later Christie is still writing about the experience, in hopes that her family’s story will connect readers to all the beautiful and terrible parts of the transplant journey. Holly has returned to her home in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and Christie currently resides in Hawaii with her husband, Jonny, and their two four-legged friends.
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Articles by Christie Patient
When someone you love is in a critical care unit, your life changes dramatically. If you choose to be…
The day after my mom, Holly, got on the transplant list, the doctor who had delivered the news said,…
This year, the central focus of my life has been my mom needing — and then receiving — a double-lung…
Organ transplants are a trade-off. The patient receives a healthy organ or organs, but the price is chronic immunosuppression.
At some point in every person’s life, death becomes part of their story. The unexpected death of a family member…
It is 9 pm. My deadline for this column is in 12 hours. Some people would call this procrastination. I…
In the age of social media, many people seem to have forgotten what healthy boundaries are. If you use Facebook,…
The path to lung transplant is different for everyone, depending on their disease and how it progresses. My mom…
Waiting for my mom, Holly, to receive a life-saving lung transplant has allowed me endless opportunity to explore the…