A NEW LEASE ON LIFE
Charlotte L’Oste-Brown sits in her SUV near her daughter’s home. L’Oste-Brown received a double-lung transplant in Edmonton about three months ago.
While women around the world were getting breakfast in bed and being pampered by their loved ones, Charlotte L’Oste-Brown spent her Mother’s Day packing a bag, getting on an air ambulance and then receiving a double lung transplant.
Three months later, she is well on the road to recovery and learning to enjoy the simple pleasure in life again.
“It’s the simple things like going out and walking the dog with (my daughter). Just returning to do normal things. I haven’t done them for so long,” said L’Oste-Brown.
In 2003, L’Oste-Brown was diagnosed with polymyositis — an inflammatory disease that causes muscle weakness. Within a year she developed pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable lung disease that leaves a person progressively more short of breath.
By 2014, she was put on the transplant list where she waited for three years — sitting on the top of the list for two of those years. At 8 a.m. on May 14, she finally received the call that a pair of lungs were ready for her.
“I was on my way out to church that morning,” said L’Oste-Brown. “And you know I kind of just went ballistic. I couldn’t believe it. I’d been waiting so long and I remember just saying, ‘Are you kidding me, are you kidding me?’ ”
After calling her daughter to share the good news, the two hopped on an air ambulance to Edmonton and L’Oste-Brown was in surgery by 4 p.m. the same day. It wasn’t until she was wheeled through the big surgery doors that she felt a flutter of fear. She said waiting for the call for three years and knowing she might die before it came, is what consumed her fear up until that moment.
L’Oste-Brown spent the first month of recovery at the hospital in Edmonton. She spent another two months in a rented apartment across the street from the hospital and finally returned to Regina last week. L’Oste-Brown’s friend — a retired nurse — volunteered to live with and assist her during her time there.
The days during those first three months of recovery were busy ones. L’Oste-Brown had to attend rehabilitation and occupational therapy five times a week, get blood work done and see the doctor two times a week.
Typically that would fill her day from about 6 a.m. to noon. Then she’d have a two- or threehour nap, wake up for dinner and be back in bed for the night at 8:30 p.m.
“They’ve been a challenge,” L’Oste-Brown says of the first few months of recovery. “Because first you’re in a bed and you can’t move and you’re starting to work with new lungs and all you’re nerve endings are cut.”
She said her first challenge was learning to use her fingers again, which weren’t working to full capacity after the surgery. Being confined to a bed and needing help for everything was also difficult.
“I think the most challenging (part of ) recovery was getting to learn to walk. You’re so weak and you’re knees just buckle,” said L’Oste-Brown.
She also had to relearn how to swallow, which she said was an unexpected part of her recovery.
L’Oste-Brown is living with her daughter Megan until the end of September when she hopes to move into her own apartment. And even though she needs to take breaks here and there, she is able to go out for dinner with her daughter, go for walks and make breakfast without worrying about bringing her oxygen tank along with her.
She expects to be fully recovered in about two months.
An advocate for organ donation before her surgery, she is excited to dive back into that work now and educate people on the need for organ donors in the province.
“I think of my donor every day and the choice that my donor made to give the gift of life.”