Envy can be ugly 😣

Emotional. Well, shit. Want to talk about an emotional rollercoaster or harsh terminology. Remember in the previous post the surgery that just had to work? Surprise, surprise..that too was unsuccessful.

After laying on an operating table, wide awake, with no pain medication, feeling every burning sensation to my heart (& there was an immense amount of areas that required it), covered in wires to where no skin was exposed, tubes in both of my groins, my neck, my arms, only to reveal that 12 hours later my heart was still showing an excess amount of arrhythmias. But, I can’t really say it became an emotional rollercoaster to me because I became so good at suppressing emotion.

Down time was nonexistent in my life between the girls & family, work, all that life includes, and the crazy life of being a cheer mom; so, what was happening to my heart became a periodic reminder, a reminder that was only thought of on the days I actually had appointments to where I had to discuss the typical doctor questions of “How are you feeling” or “any new symptoms”. Symptoms, what’s that? “Sorry doc, but I’m not very symptomatic so can I go?” That statement became robotic to me.

Now let me clarify, I understood entirely my diagnosis of Stage 3/4 Congestive Heart failure, ARVC, Dilated cardiomyopathy, PVC’s, SVT, NSVT. I understood the severity of each of those and the mere fact that each of those could cause cardiac arrest and sudden death. What I was too naïve to understand was life would eventually change.

Disappointment became routine; therefore, logically to me I just lowered my expectations to avoid disappointment. Instead it allowed for me to remain lax and carefree with my diagnosis without having emotion towards it. Sure disappointment happened after every appointment, but that disappointment only lasted for an hour at the max and I was back to my routine of life. The one thing I have became certain of was that I wouldn’t go through another surgery like the one I had just went through.

Little did I realize that this was only the beginning of a vicious cycle. A vicious cycle that was now my reality, my everyday life of living with heart disease. I became a pro at avoiding the conversation of my heart condition with those that were aware of it because the terms “Rest”, “Get better”, “How are you”, “Don’t overdue it” went from terms of endearment to terms that I started to resent. I was going to live my best life, regardless of the restrictions that I would soon face and that was hard for others to comprehend just as it was difficult for me to discuss my condition. It took me a very, very long time to not envy the fact that I would suffer from life changing events in the future; however, the day Sierra was diagnosed with the same gene on top of Prolonged QT Syndrome (silent cardiac killer) and she nearly broke in tears listening to the cardiologist. It was then, that I realized in order for Sierra to maintain optimism I had to remain calm and continue to be her role model because in reality she’s been mine for so long. I’ve been envying something that’s not going to change and it was time to fully accept it. In order to do that I had to acknowledge and speak of my condition when others showed concern.

Little did I realize that the surgery I had envied so much was going to be occurring again, along with more invasive, riskier surgeries in the very near future….