Another Procedure On The Books

Thank God. Patrick had no lasting effects from the procedure, and was annoying the nurses as soon as he began to come out of the anesthesia. When he was brought out, she asked, "Is he like this all the time?" He still has stomach discomfort but it's not like what it was. And the theory we're working with now is that it's his arrhythmia medication that is messing with his stomach. But there is really no help for that, for obvious reasons. I feel bad that Patrick's life has been settling for New Normals over the last few years - coming to terms with living with a steadily decreasing quality of life. I see it every day. If you think, "Wow, he has such energy! Such life!" it's because he chooses to hide it. And yes, he has learned to live with it. Patrick has chosen to make his heart failure an invisible disability. His inner strength astounds me. He may not be the medical anomaly his doctors think he is, but he is certainly a spiritual anomaly. I feel blessed every day I get to spend with him. I know. I know. It IS possible for one to feel the urge to strangle someone while at the same time feeling blessed to be with them. I suppose in that way I am a bit of an anomaly as well! 😆 Thanks to everyone for your prayers and positive thoughts ❤

Health Update - Gastrointestinal Issues

It has been a minute since I updated you guys on Patrick’s current health, and we have had some inquiries so we decided it was time. We have had some interesting situations over the last few months. Patrick’s health continues to decline, not by leaps and bounds but by a steady trickle. “Heart sick” is something he says he feels often, with increasing frequency. Imagine your heart beating unnaturally strong within your chest, being able to feel skipped beats and the flutter of a palpitation, and to feel your lungs filling with fluid as it gets hard to breathe. These are things Patrick feels when he describes being heart sick. A trigger is sodium. He had a splurge today that I questioned, and we had a very polite argument about exactly who is supposed to be controlling the food he eats. He effectively ended the conversation by throwing in, “Come on, Haley. One of us has to be the adult here.” He meant me. Marriage is hard. If anyone ever tells you it's easy, don’t believe them. If anyone ever tells you your spouse won’t throw ridiculous fictional curveballs in the middle of an argument, walk away. They don’t know what they’re talking about. Patrick can eat a meal that I have done my best to keep low sodium, but if I use processed broth or cheese or a combination of several ingredients that each have a little bit of sodium, within ten minutes of eating his first bite he’ll start to complain of a heaviness in his chest. One fast food sandwich can have more sodium in it than what he should eat in a day. A meal from a restaurant could kill him. This is our reality. This is American food. But through it all, Patrick’s positive attitude is always present. It might be like a giant pair of rose colored glasses, but sometimes we all need a bit of intervention from reality. Sometimes Patrick’s intervention is to his detriment, but foolish is the person who tells him to stop. There haven’t been many times over the last few years, both at our apartment and now at our home, where you wouldn’t find Patrick snowblowing the driveway after a snow storm. He was out clearing the driveway today because over the last week he has been more uncomfortable and sick to his stomach than normal, and hasn’t had the desire to go out and do it. Today he was already geared up and ready after clearing some snow for a friend, so in preparation for the foot of snow forecast for this weekend he went out immediately after getting home to clear our own driveway. Some days I want to strangle him. I went out to check on him and he came over to give me a kiss, then proceeded to tell me the funny thing about snowblowing where our dog pees is that he could smell the pee-snow raining down on his face as he worked. And he had just kissed me, smiling. Disgusting man. He claimed to be lying. I really hope that was the truth. But other days I sit back and watch the marvel that is Patrick. He loves his job, caring for seniors. He loved his job prior to Covid, caring for people with disabilities. He loves his family to distraction. Sometimes I joke that he worships the ground I walk on but he’ll shrug and say that’s true. He has a huge heart (figuratively AND physically… Thanks, CHF), and a hard time saying No (unless I’m asking for a puppy). He loves God and isn’t afraid to say so. He’ll give a panhandler $5 after I’ve lectured him on the merits of buying them a meal instead of enabling them to feed their vices. He stops for broken down vehicles on the side of the road, tows strangers out of ditches, and gives rides to hitchhikers. He likes paying for random family’s meals at restaurants. He has a wise-cracking side of him that will never be put to rest. He’ll pull a joke out of the back recesses of his mind and not spare a thought to what it is or whether it’s appropriate or not, if he thinks it will make you smile. If someone wronged you he’ll say you probably deserved it, just to throw you off kilter. If he sees a driver swerve or make a bad choice, he’ll say it’s probably a woman just to get a rise out of me (he knows I hate that crap - and boy do I love passing that vehicle and pointing out the male driver!!) He has a long list of faults, a.k.a. quirks, but the best thing about him is his ability to make you smile. Every night he prays with the kids and I, that he’ll make it to 85 or older. Why? Because he wants to beat his mom; to live longer than she does. I’m not sure she knows about this friendly competition between the two of them, but she’ll find out this summer when she stays with us and is included in our nightly prayers! A long time ago some friends of our threw a baby shower for me, and I was understandably emotional. He showed up, participated in every game, was the only person willing to wear the adult diaper over his clothes, and was the life of the party. Have you seen the crazy church videos we made for The Landing Church during Covid? Also, he wore ninja turtle face paint to a Zoom work meeting. Who else would do that?! Patrick puts himself out there again and again, to be used, to be laughed at, to be relied upon, and expects nothing in return. He is a gem. Tomorrow at noon he is going in for a scope procedure so that they might find what is causing him such bad abdominal discomfort. This isn’t a procedure either of us takes lightly. Elective procedures (think: vasectomy *shiver*) are not a possibility with him. We want to put his body and his heart under as little stress as possible - to avoid anesthesia at all costs. Also, he is on blood thinners, so bleeding is a valid concern. But at this point, after months and months of nausea and discomfort and pain, sleepless nights and worry and stress, we have to focus on his quality of life. Patrick will smile through the sickness, deal with the vomiting, and go about his day as though the inside of his body isn’t betraying him. So tomorrow we ask for prayer, for positive thoughts, and to focus on a swift, productive procedure performed by well rested nurses and doctors. At best we hope they find a plastic fork tine (do you guys know that story?!), and at worst, a more serious problem that they know how to fix. At the very least we just pray that Patrick comes out of it no worse for wear than he is when he goes under anesthesia. But above all we pray this procedure improves his quality of life a noticeable amount. Thanks for keeping him in your prayers. It means the world to both of us ❤

Humor Is Our Life's Blood

Just some humor for today 😆 I was thinking of something that happened this past spring and wanted to tell you guys, because as usual for us it was both horrifying and funny. We were on a walk around our neighborhood, either during our Covid quarantine period for the kids or shortly after. The ground was still wet in places, and snow filled the ditches of our dirt road. We have a great Golden Retriever named Blue. At the time he wasn't quite 2, and we wanted to bring him on our walks with us. This wasn't something that was easy. We never taught him not to pull on the leash. He was wild! On this particular day I took the stroller, and Patrick spent half a mile wrestling Blue into a semblance of submission, but did so at the expense of his body. It was hard work. Blue is 70 pounds and his chest and shoulders ripple with muscle when he pulls at the leash. We had no idea what was going to happen. Patrick suddenly stopped and told me something was happening. I think he let go of the leash and I called to Laura to grab it and hang onto Blue. Then Patrick went down on one knee, and then the other. Of course, I knew what was happening. He knew it also. He braced himself on the stroller tray, probably thinking he was going to rest for a moment and then get back up. But that's when he lost consciousness. His arm slipped down into Samuel's lap and hooked the tray. I had to make a split second decision, and I grabbed Patrick's arm as the stroller began to tip. He is much too heavy for me to control simply by having a hold on his arm, so I dislodged it from the stroller tray and he went down, forehead-first into the cold, frozen gravel. We found out later that his heart had stopped. From what I've seen, when he is unconscious and his defibrillator gives a strong shock, his body doesn't give any indication that anything is happening. I got down beside him and slapped his face. I slapped it and slapped, slapped some more, calling his name in a loud but calm tone because I had a toddler and three young girls watching my every move. I very nearly started screaming, wondering if a neighbor would hear me. He came to, his eyes fluttering until they were open, looking up at me in those few moments after unconsciousness when he is disoriented and needs to get his bearings. After a moment he spoke, sat up, and eventually rose to his knees. Then he said his face hurt. I'm kind of giggling as I write this, because this is where we find humor in the unimaginable. I had to tell him, "It was either your face or the entire stroller." I had to explain that I let him fall so he wouldn't drag Samuel down with him. He was digging small rocks out of his face for the next couple of days, giving me side eye and halfheartedly joking that I didn't take good enough care of him during an episode. When waking up from losing consciousness, where any other time he mostly feels the abnormal sensations in his chest, this time he awoke bleeding from his face. He knew he had lowered himself to the ground, but he didn't know it wasn't far enough that the remainder of his descent was carefully, safely orchestrated. He went down like... well, a dead weight. Boom. I felt the vibration in the ground when he hit. And all he did for days afterwards was whine about how I wasn't strong enough 😂 What a brat. I would say, "Your eye socket did its job. Your eye is fine, right?!" Some of you may wonder how the kids feel about all of this. Maybe one day I'll compile a list of questions and record an interview. I think that would be interesting, to see how all their answers differ. But for now I'm 100% sure they take their cues from me. If I'm calm, they are calm. If I don't fall apart, they don't fall apart. That's not to say we hide things from them. We have told them when the defibrillator has brought Patrick back to life. We have told them all about the times when they are asleep and the medics come into the house with their heavy boots and equipment and loud voices, and the girls sleep right through it. We tell them Patrick is headed for a transplant. And we tell them we love them. Over and over. We laugh. We joke. We tease. We keep life fun, even when our family is facing, as I said before, an unimaginably difficult future. What is to come, we don't know. So we choose humor and love. Never stop laughing! Always find reasons to smile! I don't know if I have said this before, but in 2007 when Patrick had his bypass in Anchorage, I was able to visit him in the recovery room. His eyes were closed, he was full of tubes and wires, but he was conscious. I told him I loved him. His response? He signed, "I love you," gave me the bird, and then showed me an obscene gesture - all with one hand. It's all he could move. But that's how I knew he was going to be okay. Pat The Brat is a survivor ❤