Al's Blog-o-Sphere

Front page story

Since last summer, back when we first started the fundraising efforts for Frank’s transplant expenses, a young journalism student who works for the Lockport Star, has followed Frank’s journey. Rachel Fuerschbach has been working on this story all that time and has interviewed many of the people in Frank’s life to get their take on it all. Earlier stories were great human interest and helped us with the fundraising efforts, but this is the whole story that she wanted to tell.
Continue Reading…

…sitting in a hospital waiting for things to start to happen.

Frank as he arrives in Teeterboro, NJ

In case you don’t know me or read this blog, back in 2008 I was in a similar situation in UPMC in Pittsburgh when my eldest son, Albert, had a double lung transplant.

I’ve gotten away from blogging here recently, having been lured away by the instant gratification of Facebook. I think that it’s time to get back on here now though, because I’m here again supporting my second son, Frank, as he faces the same situation. I think serious matters require a serious platform. I’ll link to FB, of course. Continue Reading…

We made it to our hotel. Got there almost exactly at 8AM. Found a bagel place and had a bite to eat, than went back to the hotel to see when we could check in, They had open rooms, so they let us check right in.

So we’re unwinding and going to grab a nap after driving all night.

The drive was uneventful. Driving at night is great. Almost no traffic until 5AM, but boy did it pick up fast and get heavy once we got close in to Baltimore and on. By then it was time for people’s morning commute and apparently six inches is plenty of room to cut in front of someone to change lanes.

I didn’t know where I was most of the time, but just followed the navigation blindly and trusted to Google. It didn’t steer us wrong. I couldn’t have done that with my Magellan. It was so dark at night that I saw very little in the way of landmarks, so it was like flying by instruments. At times I thought I was in a tunnel.

We drove through some light fog, but otherwise the weather was great.

A while back I had written in this blog about the experience of my son’s lung transplant. I don’t much feel like writing this post, but in the interest of following up the story, I am.
Albert lost his 35-year battle against Cystic Fibrosis this past week. He passed away in Pittsburgh at the same hospital he had received his new lungs in.
He had been in the hospital for nearly the past six months. Problems with lung infections caused the new lungs to present rejection symptoms. The cocktail of drugs being used to fight both the infections and the rejection took their toll on his kidneys and he experienced kidney failure. Eventually, they reached the point where if they treated the infection aggressively, they would lose the battle against rejection and if they treated for the rejection, the infection would get worse.
His brother and I visited him and were on the way there again when the news arrived. He had refused a ventilator and accepted his end with courage and grace.
He told his brother, Frank, who is also a CF patient and currently undergoing transplant approval, that the transplant was worth it and he was glad for the extra time it gave him. He had the transplant three years ago.
Please remember Albert in your thoughts. Should you wish, a donation to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in his name would be appreciated.

His cartoon web page has been updated as a memorial site. You can see it here.

Many friends have left touching notes at his Facebook page as well.