Catching Our Breath

On June 18, 2011, forty-eight hours away from death, Larry Booth received the gift of life. On that morning, after a six-hour operation at Stanford Hospital, Larry received a successful double lung transplant from a fourteen-year-old girl who had made the decision; she wanted to help people go on if she couldnt. What follows in these pages is a chronicle of the six-year struggle Larry endured to not only stay alive, but to also find the true nature of his disease. He went from doctor to doctor as he experienced different symptomsfrom clinical trials to VATS surgery for biopsy. It was the summer of 2009, and after self-diagnosis and medical guessing, he ended up at Stanford Hospital and clinics. You will follow Larry through The Disease, The Transplant Window, and Transplant Recovery. And you will get a true picture of what it is like to not know if you will live to see another day, every day. The final part is a fast-paced short story playing with the theory of cellular memory. What if transplanted lungs could reason, use logic, had emotions, could sense things, and were able to communicate with the host brain? It is filled with humor and suspense and chase scenes. Its a real cops-and-robbers kind of read.