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 ❤️

Old Dreams & New Dreams

When Patrick and I first started dating we made a lot of plans. He was a bit older than me but as many of you know, his youthful personality drives away any perception of age. We had so much fun and felt like we had the world at our fingertips. We were overjoyed to find out we were pregnant with our oldest. Life couldn't get any better. The dreams we had included vacations as a family, buying a home, homeschooling our kids, exploring Alaska, and spending decades together while we watched our family grow and blossom until we were both old and gray (although Patrick was already gray when I met him *snicker*) When I was just a few months pregnant and we hadn't even been together for a year, Patrick fell sick with a horrible flu and refused to go to the doctor. At that point he hadn't told me that ten years prior he had had a heart attack, and he didn't tell me that for ten years he had eschewed the medication suggestions of doctors. When he collapsed in our hallway unconscious and I was unable to rouse him for several seconds I managed to convince him to go to the doctor. After a several misdiagnoses that included gall bladder disease and pancreatitis, and an illness that wasn't getting any better with treatment, an emergency room doctor finally ordered a chest x-ray that should have been done at the very beginning, and diagnosed Patrick with congestive heart failure, with a heart twice the size of a healthy adult. Our dreams all but faded that day as we met with the doctor. You often hear, "Our world was turned upside down." Ours certainly was, especially when the doctor began talking about how our focus now was to be on quality of life. What began after that moment became our journey to Our New Normal. Over the years we have reached many New Normals, most recently being the decreased heart function and our quest to get Patrick on the heart transplant list. But through it all we have found joy in living the life we have created together. It took us a while to get the house (we purchased one this year), and when our oldest was born with a disability we found the courage to put her in public school and watched her thrive in the new environment. Other dreams fell by the wayside, delayed but not forgotten. So while our story has not been finished and we are still very much in the revision stage, we find joys to add in and celebrate every day, blessings written in the margins to be thankful for, and laughter to pepper the way with happiness.