Living With A Grateful Heart

We're trying to make a lot of small videos like this one. Maybe someday I'll put them in a montage. Today I would prefer to enjoy the real thing. Today is our 14th wedding anniversary. There was a time when someone told me Patrick should have told me about his family history of heart disease when we started dating. I thought it was absurd. They were implying I could have chosen to find someone else instead of dating the guy who made me incredibly happy. I'm glad we have had these last fifteen years together. I'm glad we got married when we did, and I'm glad we have created our perfect little family with unique, special kids and a love between he and I that has stood the test of time. This last year has been tough. Man, has it been tough! But we live each day as though we have forever stretching out in front of us; as though our time together isn't limited. We may not achieve everything on our bucket list before Patrick is taken home, but that's okay. He and I are living the biggest bucket list item, and that's being loved unconditionally by our spouse. It's a dream many never achieve. Thanks to everyone who follows this page, everyone in our church and everyone in our support network. We feel the love, and we return it <3

No News Means We're Living

The phrase "No news is good news" keeps revolving through my head. It feels like I would like to write it here, but it's simply not true. Patrick had two episodes since my last post. One was during church while we were sitting and listening to the message (jokes could flow here about how funny and entertaining Pastor Stan's message was). And the other was last night while we waited in the truck for the New Years fireworks to start at the university. There were no triggers. No sodium-filled meal. No third cup of coffee. No stress-filled situation involving the kids (or me!) It is what it is. Patrick's heart is telling us its sick, and that it's time is limited. If it could talk I'm sure it would say, "I've seen some things... some things I wish I hadn't seen..." Sorry, Patrick. I had to say it. But seriously, this is how we live - we go to church and enjoy our loving church family. We do things together like seeing fireworks displays. And we move through life almost as though nothing is wrong. What choice do we have? So I guess the alternative is "No news means we're living." I'll post when there is something to post, like an exceptionally cute photo of Patrick and Samuel. And until we have another update on Patrick, just assume we're hanging in there. ❤

Another Heart Episode - V-Tach

I will try to keep this short. My posts of late have been rather long-winded. Patrick was shocked today with an episode of v-tach. He collapsed in front of a customer at the shop, but managed to come out of it just before the darkness finished closing in. There was no trigger, no real reason for it to happen other than the current status of his heart and its inability to sustain a healthy rhythm. The image I attached to this post is of a device the cardiologists use to interrogate and adjust Patrick's ICD. They wave a magic wand over his ICD and suddenly he's connected via wireless connection to the device. It tells the cardiologists everything that has happened to Patrick's heart since the previous interrogation. With a few clicks and a few taps of a stylus they can speed up his pacing and make him feel like Superman, or they can turn the pacing down and make him feel like a dying old man. It's surreal, disturbing, and creepy. The power of technology is at the same time fascinating and frightening. At his last follow-up on Monday they were concerned about his level of anxiety regarding the possibility of enduring more shocks, and the frequency with which the defibrillator has still been issuing corrective shocks. To counteract both of these they decided to decrease certain thresholds at which the pacemaker shocks him, and at which the defibrillator issues the initial corrective shock. They did this by telling it to pace him after a smaller amount of missed beats, thereby increasing the efficacy of the pacemaker in being enough to prevent the defibrillator from going off. They also reduced the length of time the defibrillator waits during an episode of v-tach before it decides to shock him. Like I said, technology is fascinating and frightening. His ICD knows when to shock, how many joules to shock him with, when to wait, and when to shock multiple times. It's not just a device - it's a miraculous little robot keeping my Patrick alive. The objective of these corrections was achieved this morning - to keep Patrick awake and to prevent him from falling unconscious during an episode. As I said in a previous post, during his last big shock he stopped breathing after passing out. The last thing we want is for brain damage to occur due to lack of oxygen to the brain during a v-tach episode that knocks him out. Let's not compound the problem, y'all... He is fine now. He stayed at work, and later when I called him to see how he was doing he was laughing with his sister and brother-in-law about a joke I can't even type here. So his sense of humor is intact and has survived unscathed throughout all of this. It's too bad you guys can't see me rolling my eyes... Thank you for your continued prayers and positive thoughts. Even though I say it until I'm blue in the face, they really do mean so much to us ❤️