...or let me tell you about my first attendance at an IPF Support Group at Vanderbilt Medical. I am so certain in my brain and heart that the meeting I attended was aberrant. It had to have been. Seriously. Really. Because Vanderbilt is a fabulous destination with amazing people.

So, about 30 people were in attendance. The guest speaker was a double lung transplant patient - two years into breathing new life into his new life.

Like most so-called uplifting, supportive IPF transplant stories, his was laced with depressing factoids. After surgery he became septic. I confess that until recently, I didn't realize that being medically septic wasn't directly related to the tank and lines buried in my front yard. This gentleman's sepsis kept him in the hospital for 67 days many of which were in ICU.

As is always the case after a donor transplant of any organ, the recipient has the opportunity to write to the donor family - presumably a letter of gratitude. Our guest speaker had done this, but the donor family waited a long while before agreeing to meet. One can't even begin to imagine the emotional forces at work in such a meeting.

The recipient had heard prior to the meeting that the lungs he'd received were from a 20 year old man - an outstanding college student and athlete. The donor had been a beloved only child. When he'd been airlifted to Vanderbilt, his mother, wrought with unbearable grief, insisted on tucking blankets around her deceased son's body - all the while fretting he might become chilled. (It escapes me how this information reached the recipient's ears, given HIPPA standards.) Her grief is one I never want to know.

The day the families met, the still-grieving mother spoke hard words to the recipient. She said, "I cannot feel your joy because I lost my son." *sigh* I know those words must've stung, but I imagine I would've felt the same way, though I don't think I would've spoken them. Her emotions could resonate in any mother's lexicon.

What I found even more shocking was the guest speaker's reaction to her grief. He shared with us, his audience: "She was a Muslim so couldn't begin to think like we Christians do."

REALLY? FLIPPIN' REALLY? REALLY!

I can't even begin to articulate my reaction beyond, "REALLY?" Of course, the irony can't be missed that Muslim lungs have given this deeply compassionate Christian a second chance at life. Yet, he was relentless regarding his denigration of her faith. I don't care if she worshipped a doorknob... she'd lost her son, her only child.

I was nearly dizzy and hyperventilating and on the verge of hysterical blindness as this person continued to rail on about Muslims - totally deviating from the miracle of life that had been placed in his chest cavity. I noticed, too, staff from the Pulmonary Clinic were a bit squirmy with the speaker's inappropriate tenor. It was dreadful.

After this man's revolting testimony, he added a postscript about another transplant patient everyone else knew - a man who hadn't survived because the lungs he'd been given had been moldy. I have no words. Support? I don't need this type of support. Support, my ass. My drunk friend is starting to look pretty good.

Truth is, I plan to attend future IPF Support Group meetings when the staff or doctors or specialists make a presentation. I know the information will be helpful and trustworthy and unbiased. It's not that I want to hear sugar-coated stories gloppy with false hope. I want something I can use - something in the holy realm of reason and optimism.

P.S. With a twisted re-think of my first support group attendence, it could've been a brilliant SNL skit... if it hadn't been for-real, it would've been hysterical because good comedy is oh so infused with expectations gone amok.