The services offered are not just physical.  Due to your new post-operational drug treatments, you will have some dietary adjustments as well.  Many current and former residents of TLC have taken advantage of these services. Danny from Pueblo used to come in as often as he could until he was released and moved back to Pueblo.  I used to see Tom from South Dakota, twice a week until he was also released and moved back home.  Mark from Santa Fe is just a few weeks out now, and is using the gym to get ready for the Transplant Games next year.

When you first arrive at the gym you will meet Joan and Alex, the Respiratory Technicians in charge of the program.  They will walk you through the gym and set you up with a personalized exercise regimen.  You will also talk with Lacey, who will discuss the adjustments you will need to make with your diet.  All of this is important.  I know it has worked for me.  Following the technician’s advice can get you back home quicker, and with fewer ‘in-between’ visits.  Isn’t that what we all hope for?

-J

Hi, I'm John.  This is my blog.

As an introduction, I received a lung transplant in 2009, so I have some knowledge of the issues surrounding a transplant recovery.  I have been with TLC since the middle of 2011.  I am starting a weekly blog about issues involving the transplant process, TLC, or anything else that strikes my mind as worthwhile, or not. First off is my feisty friend Jenny Cupps from England.  Yes, you could say she was transplanted from the UK, but I'm not going there.  Jenny got her lung transplant in 2005. Just prior to that event, she, like many of us, was in failing health, literally! After that, as if to make up for lost time and opportunities, she has pretty much traveled the world. Her list is mind-boggling: Alaskan Glaciers, Hawaiian dolphins, Panama Canal, Pisa and Venice, Egyptian pyramids, and more.

On the Grand Canal, in beautiful downtown Venice	In Petra, Jerusalem, where Indiana Jones #3 was shot	The Church in Pisa.  Notice how straight the tower is?

On the glacier in Alaska	Swimming with the dolphins in Hawaii	Camel Racing?

'Crocodile' Jenny Dundee	Pirate of the Caribbean	Sealed with a kiss (OK,bad joke)

Each trip has included animal interactions of one sort or another, as you can see. Whether it is a camel, donkey, dolphin, sea turtle, parrot, or crocodile, these trips have amply demonstrated her tenacity and spirit.  She has served on the Board of Directors for the Transplant Living Centers since 2008 and has been an active participant of the Heart-Lung Transplant Support Group since 2005.  To quote her, "I have done so much with my second life if I passed away tomorrow I would have to say I had more than my money's worth."  Jenny has been an inspiration to so many of us, for so long, I just can't say enough good things about her.  We are all very fortunate to know her.

-J

We at Transplant Living Centers are extremely grateful to Tina Pacheco West, a former resident who stayed with her parents (Frank and Esther) while her father was recovering from a lung transplant. While Tina and her family stayed with us, I was fortunate to get to know all of them well. We developed a friendship that I know will last and I will always keep in touch with them. Frank is doing great in recovery (although I think he might be a bit bored not working) and Esther is happily back at work.

When the Pachecos left to go home and Tina told me that they would help us in any way they could with fundraising, I knew immediately that she meant it. There are some people you just know you can take at their word and the Pacheco family is a perfect example. They went out of their way when they stayed here to make sure everything was well taken care of in their condo and left us with an ample supply of food and supplies for the next residents.  Here we are a few months later with an amazing fundraiser to write about put together by Tina! I have to say I was not surprised at all when she told me about it.

Frank and Esther

Tina                             

On Sunday, 4 December, in Laramie, Wyoming, Tina put her excellent fundraising skills to work and organized the “Tea Party Fundraiser” which included some dangerously delicious pastries, live music, awesome hats, and, of course, tea. The local girl-scout troop was also involved and thoroughly enjoyed their afternoon tea experience. The fundraiser was hosted by The Women of the Moose, Chapter 423, Moose Lodge 390. Thank you Moose Lodge!!!!! It was an awesome fundraiser!

In addition to all of the wonderful food and music, Transplant Living Centers received cash donations and an assortment of kitchenware, baking supplies, linens and many other essential (and luxurious) items necessary for our residents’ comfort.  

We would like to extend special recognition to Cathy and Shelby who produced most of the outstanding baked goods and Harold the Bartender (who monitored the Broncos game for us). Our very own John Stansbery (TLC’s Director of Operations) spoke at the Tea about his own transplant experience, TLC’s mission and goals.  

And, as I am sure you can tell, I am still not fully operational when using "Wordpress" which is what I am using to post this blog. If it was up to me, this layout would look completely different, the photos would be different sizes, in other places with nice borders and the spacing in the print layout would be correct.

This is a photo of Marcia at Devil's Head (9,748') just three months after her lung transplant! She also passed her four month check-up with flying colors.

Tony and Marcia sent us the following email a few days ago that I would like to share:

Dear Shannon,

Just a note to let you know that all is well with us. Marcia passed her three month evaluation with flying colors and has been thoroughly enjoying her new lung. We went to the Castle Rock area and climbed up to the Devil's Head Fire Tower — a 1,000 ft. elevation gain — and Marcia chugged right up it! She is living comfortably here in Old Snowmass at 7,400 ft. and is hiking and riding her bike and has started painting again.

We want to especially thank you and the Transplant Living Center for providing us with such a perfect home away from home in which to heal and enjoy the start of our new life. I can't tell you what a relief it was to move into #104. Everything we needed was right there — just like someone had thought carefully about it! The location was great and the neighborhood was perfect for our daily walks. It was so important to us to have a place we could call home so we could concentrate our energies on learning to live with a new organ. We can't thank you and John and Ron for your hospitality and support, and special thanks to Susan Hamelin, God Bless Her, for her work in founding TLC. The Transplant Living Center will always occupy a very fond place in our hearts, and we hope all future occupants have the same positive experience and good luck we had.

Our best to all,

Marcia and Tony Fusaro

We all are extremely excited to hear that Marcia is doing so well and wish her and Tony the best. We are glad that they were able to stay with us at Transplant Living Centers.

FIRST SNOW at Transplant Living Centers

Today, October 26 is the first storm of the season! Seems to have arrived quite a bit earlier than last year. There was absolutely no snow last October. As I am still relatively new to Colorado, I  have a hard time getting used to an 80 degree Monday and a 30 degree Wednesday. I think Colorado gets a little confused when it comes to weather. 

OTHER NEWS

John Stansbery, who has been working here since June, 2011, was elected as a Board Member at our last meeting. Our next Board of Directors meeting will be held on Saturday, November 5 at 9:00 a.m.  All of our Board Meetings our open to the public and if you are interested in attending, please feel free to contact us.

We are still running at full capacity and are continuously receiving calls from patients regarding accommodations. Our primary mission is to provide housing to ALL transplant patients and their families who need a place to call home while they are recovering.

Donations are always appreciated.

August was a busy, exciting month for us. We raised enough money to update one of our units with new flooring! Yipee! Yay! The flooring looks great and is much healthier for our residents and so much easier to keep clean and free of dust. Thanks to Nicole Prange, Ben Lesavoy and John Stansbery for their enthusiastic efforts and expertise in installing the flooring. It took us five full days to install and we had residents move in the day after we finished. Amazing how quickly I learned how to use an electric saw (particular type slips my mind) without any major injury to my fingers. I still get to use all ten fingers to type this blog. You can see more photos of our extraordinary project on Facebook and Crowdrise.

We also attended the AREDAY Conference (American Renewable Energy Day) in Aspen from August 17th through the 21st.  Ron Pieper, our Development Director made all the arrangements and was responsible for procuring free housing, free passes and the space for a free booth at the Areday Expo. Our objective in attending was to learn about and make connections with people/organizations specifically interested in renewable energy and environmental efficiency. One of our long term goals at Transplant Living Centers is to "green" our condominiums which, we hope, will result in a healthier recovery environment for our residents.

One of the on-line events we are most excited about is our feature on the popular fundraising site, Crowdrise. Nicole, our number one on-line, making friends, fundraising volunteer actually got us a feature as one of the TOP THREE CHARITIES ON THEIR HOMEPAGE.  They are providing graphics to make Transplant Living Centers look great and worthy of lots of donations.  Crowdrise features 1.5 million charities on their site so to be one of the top three is quite a feat. When people log onto the Crowdrise homepage our wonderful facility and smiling faces will be seen by all. It also helps that this website seems to be very appealing to the Hollywood community and was started by the actor, Edward Norton.

Our occupancy rate has been 95-100% for all condos the past five months. We wish we could accommodate all requests and really need more units.

Our Mission Statement: To provide spacious, safe, clean and affordable housing to as many transplant patients and their families as we possibly can.

We will continue to work hard to achieve our mission.

Thanks to all for your continued support!

John is the newest addition to our team here at Transplant Living Centers.  Although he is a Rockies fan (and I, of course, am a Giants fan), I try extremely hard not to compare the two teams. He is already aware of the fact that the Giants won the World Series but faithfully wears his Rockies cap to our office every day. Since the Rockies are "only" 10 games behind the Giants, I suppose he has the right to dream that his team might have a chance at the playoffs.

John grew up in the Seattle Metro area until he joined the US Army in 1970. After 24 years of moving and working throughout the world, he retired in 1994. He and Barbara have been married 40 years, and have three children and eight grandchildren. They have lived in the Denver area since 1989. 

Through his military background, John has gathered extensive experience in administrative and operational management, from teaching electronics and computer skills to writing and editing training and field manuals, from the initial concept through the Camera-Ready Mechanicals.

In 1999, five years after retiring from the Army, John found out he had cancer. After surgery and chemotherapy, he was declared “in remission” in early 2000. While in the hospital, he succeeded in his efforts to quit his 30-year smoking habit, but it was a bit too late, as his COPD continued growing. 

In 2008 his Pulmonologist recommended him to the UCH Lung Transplant team. During the interview process, he was hospitalized twice, pushing his eventual acceptance back to June 2009. He was extremely lucky in that just eight weeks later he got “The Call”. The operation was completed on August 2, 2009, which resulted in almost immediate improvement.

Prior to the operation, John had been working out at the rehab center, and was only able to walk on the treadmill for a couple of minutes at 0.5 mph before bottoming out. So far, in 2011, he has participated in two 5k walks, including the 2011 Donor Dash where, in addition to walking the 5k, he helped coordinate our team and set up our booth.

He was one of the initial members of the UCH Mentoring program for Lung Transplant patients, and is still quite involved. In June, John joined Transplant Living Centers as Director of Operations and is dedicated to helping us succeed in our vision of expanding our services.

The office is much brighter when he is here and his good-natured, considerate, always helpful demeanor is greatly appreciated by me, our residents, our staff and my cat.

Contact John

The 2011 Donor Alliance Donor Dash was a huge success with over 4,000 people attending  and 65 teams participating in the 5k race. TLC was proud to be  part of this event honoring those who have given the gift of life, celebrate those who have received the gift of life and recognize those still waiting for a transplant.

Although I sat under the shade of our tent (sweating) on a typically hot Denver day, our "Team Susan" of walkers/runners enthusiastically finished the 5k race without complaint. Of course, they had our extremely enthusiastic team leader Nicole for motivation. I really wanted her to run with pom poms but she refused, not wanting anything to hamper her sprint to the finish line.

We also had quite a few volunteers in our tent who provided information about TLC, greeted everyone with a smile and helped with clean-up and set-up. I couldn't have done it without their help.

We finished the day with a pizza/salad/beer party in a much appreciated air-conditioned restaurant.

Thank you so much to everyone who participated in this important event.

Nicole is already planning for next year's Dash.

Thursday, July 14 was my last phone call with my friends’ Amanda and Paul at Qwest Small Business services.

I was reluctant, at first, to work with Qwest in exchange for my honest opinion about their services ONLY. Of course, our phones and internet are through Qwest which is why we were offered help with our social networking in the first place.  And… they do get free advertising of a sort but that really depends upon how well they do their job (if you think about it).  If people don’t read what I am writing, blogging, twittering, posting, etc…, then they won’t know anything about the TLC/Qwest relationship.

The quality of help I received from the Qwest support staff was excellent. I don’t think TLC would be up to 450 followers on Twitter and have 88 Likes on Facebook without my weekly interactions with the Qwest staff.  LinkedIn is a tool that I would never have dealt with unless it was “suggested” to me by Paul and Amanda. LinkedIn has provided a wealth of information to me since now I actually understand how it works. The interaction between groups keeps me updated on topics relevant to our business, here, at TLC.

So, after two months of weekly interactions with Qwest, I have nothing negative to report and would recommend their services, with glowing reviews, to anyone who asks.

34 Miles With A New Heart

Sean's Story

Sean Crawley is one of Transplant Living Center's dedicated volunteers. In Sean's own words:

"February 24, 2010 was a day that changed my life forever.  It was a normal day; I even played basketball that night. The next morning when I was going to work, I could not catch my breath and was that way all day. In the afternoon, I went to see my doctor and was told I had an elevated heart rate and needed a chest x-ray. An hour later, my doctor told me that I had an enlarged heart and needed to go to the hospital for an ultrasound on my heart the next day.

Before I could make it to the hospital, I woke up at 3:00 a.m. and could not breathe. I was admitted to UCH and was told I would need a heart transplant…"

Sean had his heart transplant on May 18, 2010.

On June 5, 2011, Sean completed a 34 mile bike ride as part of the American Transplant Foundation's 2011 Team Transplant, which rode in the Subaru Elephant Rock ride. Sean was the only heart transplant patient riding in the event.

Sean is dedicated to raising donor awareness and is actively helping us with our vision of expanding Transplant Living Centers to meet the housing needs of all transplant patients, their caregivers and families.