RDP #23 – HEART
I have a heart.
Everyone (living) has one. These days, the issue is whether or not it works like it ought to. You know, compassion. Caring, love, concern. That stuff.
Mine is a little more complicated. I have two replaced heart valves – mitral and aortic. I also had a myocardectomy involving removing an oversized muscle in the left ventricle which had grown exponentially because the mitral valve wasn’t working. There was also a bypass and implanting a pacemaker.
After they opened my chest, it never properly healed. This has made full-scale recovery difficult. There’s nothing that can make the chest heal if it doesn’t want to.
Sometimes, injuries don’t heal. They should, but for some reason, don’t. The medical team will tell you it will, but it depends on your body’s ability to recreate cartilage. Your chest isn’t solid. It’s a mobile design so you can breathe.
Until my chest didn’t heal, I had no idea how many different parts of my body were connected to my chest.
I didn’t know there was anything wrong with my heart except for that annoying murmur I’d had since I was a child. I knew I was out of breath often, but I was still recovering from a recent bi-lateral mastectomy (cancer), so I wasn’t at my peak. Whatever my peak might be. I’m not sure I’ve been at a peak for years. Like maybe 15? Or maybe never?
Anyway, they told me that after all this repair work was done, I would feel MUCH better. Except my heart wasn’t bothering me. It’s my back that really kills me.
Four years later, I feel better. I’m 7 years past cancer and almost four years post heart surgery and I’m gradually becoming human. Unfortunately, I’m also 7 years older which, at my age, is a not an inconsiderable difference. You don’t bounce back from surgery the way you did when you were younger.
Nonetheless, I am better. I haven’t been sick except for a cold and a stomach virus and they only lasted a few days. What’s left is a woman with a badly damaged spine, a seriously screwed up digestive system, two fake breasts, and a redesigned heart.
As for the digestion, acid reflux, left untended for a lifetime, can make a mess of your innards. If you have a reflux problem, you might want to deal with it before it deals with you.
Now, speaking of my heart, I have one. No small miracle, that. My pacemaker is metal, so I can’t have an MRI … which for some reason the medical staff of my local hospital refuses to believe, even though it’s not as if I have a reason to lie about it.
Also, to go with the spine, I have fibromyalgia. Spinal arthritis (there was a surgery involved there, too) is bad and fibromyalgia goes with serious arthritis like the horse goes before the cart. I deal with it. I deal with everything. There’s so much to deal with sometimes, I wonder how I find time to deal with anything else.
Weirdly, you get used to it. Impossible though it seems, you learn when you are going to have a bad day. On those days, you rest. Listen to audiobooks or read. Process photographs. You do not go for long walks or explore the wilds.
I also understand that even had I not had such a long run of ill-health, I would be getting on in years, so I’d be dealing with something. It’s just one of those things. A few people enjoy brilliant health from birth to the end. Others of us? Not so much.
For all that, I do feel better. I can walk. I have some kind of MS that mostly affects my eyes but is in remission. I don’t seem to have any sign of renewed cancer. I had it twice so I’m hoping that was all of it.
There’s not much more they can do to my heart except change the battery in the pacemaker and no surgeon wants to do anything to my back. As long as I can walk, no one will touch it.
I have a heart. It works. It’s extraordinary what they can do to fix us these days.
Absolutely astonishing.
