While Marcia was in the SICU, he gently chided some of her friends who were discussing the neckline of the dress Marcia was planning to wear in her best friend's wedding in late June. Marcia makes weekly visits to the lung-transplant clinic at Vanderbilt. But Marcia is concerned about this trip, a month after her transplant. If the transplant doctors find that her latest set of X-rays reveal more fluid around her lungs than the set she had taken the previous week, they will probably order a bronchoscopy, an uncomfortable procedure that biopsies the lungs and one she dreads. Doctors are looking for signs of rejection.
Undetected rejection is a transplant patient's biggest concern.
Bob aligns both sets of X-rays, new atop the old, using the sternum wires that hold her chest bone together, as guides. Marcia, relieved by her husband's amateur diagnosis, teases him. Put the X-rays up, Bob. They show how flat-chested I am. Clinic staffers agree with Bob's reading.