And this is where I am.
Jesus rose Lazarus from the dead...but Lazarus eventually died. Jesus healed the woman who had been bleeding for a dozen years...she eventually died. Jesus healed the lame man...he eventually died, too. What I'm saying is that Jesus can work miracles in our lives, but because we are mortal creatures, we will eventually pass away. I've watched enough real-life crime shows to know that some people who have met their demise at the hands of another were miracles themselves. Surviving family members have expressed that their loved one had survived a childhood illness or anything else, and my brain goes to how awful it is that a person had their life taken away from them after surviving childhood leukemia, for example. Things like that. And it gets me thinking about the fragility of life, that we can be someone's miracle baby, but our lives can end in an instant. We are not special just because we survived a heart attack at birth, or cancer, or a car accident at three years old. Everyone dies. You may be wondering why I'm writing about this today after having not published a blog post in over six months. Because my mortality is on my mind again. The valve that by God's hand and the miracle of Lovenox unstuck last year just in time for my surgery to be aborted in the OR is sticking again. Or it's stuck. Allow me to tell the tale in the Reader's Digest version: I'd honestly thought Judy the Valve would last me the rest of my life, truly. I even bought a truckload of Elly & Grace Christian t-shirts to remind me of God's grace. Shirts like, "He is the God of Miracles," "Not Today, Satan," and "And If Not, He is Still Good." I even messed up my "Thankful, Grateful, & Blessed" t-shirt last year when my palate hematoma exploded open. All summer, even as I struggled mentally and spiritually with the experience of getting thisclose to surgery, I threw myself into planning for the future: Going back to teaching in person, even with COVID protocols in place. And before I knew it, it was August. One day, a couple weeks before school started, I found myself short of breath all day. Shopping at the grocery store, cleaning and tidying the house, sitting on the couch. And then, in the early evening as Mike was outside watering our newly-planted garden out front, my heart went into the strangest rhythm. THUMP-THUMP-THUMPPITTY-THUMP. And then I could breathe freely, as if I'd just been given a nebulizer treatment. Strange. I messaged my cardiologist's nurse through the patient portal even though it was a Saturday, and on Monday she called me to tell me to report for an echo on Friday. That echo showed my valve was working just fine, and a week later, I was back at work. Still, I couldn't shake these digestive issues I started having after my COVID booster. Crushing heartburn and pain in the upper right quadrant. Fear gripped me: What if this is pancreatic cancer? I was only three years younger than my daddy was at the time of his diagnosis, but I still tried to explain away the symptoms. I was stressed, tired, middle-aged, I just needed a Tums. Mike convinced me to go to our GP, and she ordered an abdominal ultrasound. It was gallstones, not cancer. This happens to women who are over 40 and have had dieted, apparently. I checked those boxes. 46. Check. I was on Weight Watchers in 2003 and 2009 and lost 50 and 35 pounds, respectively. Check. Long story short, my last day working was the Friday before Thanksgiving, and I had surgery to remove my gallbladder a couple weeks later. A complication with the incision ensued a few days post-op, and my healing was stunted for a few weeks. But Doc, in his usual fashion, decided "what the heck?" and ordered an echo while I stayed in the hospital overnight recovering from the gallbladder surgery. He lost his stuffing at the fact that the mean gradient was 7.8 (indicating valvular stenosis, or narrowing), and shortly before he discharged me, he came into my room all a-bluster as he thrust his knees against the foot of my hospital bed and started rattling off: "Debra, I don't like the way your valve looks...your mean gradient is high...I want to send you back to the surgeon." Mike and I exchanged glances. "Doc, can't you just let me heal from this surgery before you start talking about another one?" I asked. Doc chuckled but was insistent that we do one more echo in mid-January just to make absolute sure. That echo revealed that my mean gradient was now 3.5; we'd both assumed, Doc and I, that my valve was "misbehaving" in December after the gallbladder surgery because I'd had to stop Coumadin for a while and my blood was sludge. Of course my valve would have to work harder. But everything was fine! My valve was as good as could be! I'd pass my TEE just to make absolute sure, and I'd go back to work February 1, now that my incision complication had resolved. I started buying school supplies, eager to get back to normal, as our dining room turned into a veritable Amazon distribution center. I'd even told the secretary at HR that I was getting stir-crazy, and I couldn't wait to go back to work. She'd called to make sure I was indeed returning on the 1st. But then God intervened. One week before my slated return, on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, Mike and I decided to order new curtains, and I was short of breath. So much so that Mike threatened to take my sorry butt to the ER. I appeased him by telling him I'd message Doc's nurse, which I did. I'd assumed that my symptoms were heart-rhythm related, and I decided that I needed to get back to my electrophysiologist. We did the TEE on Thursday, and my valve was stuck. The summary report states: Mechanical bileaflet MV prosthesis with pannus formation and stuck leaflet in the closed position. I was not to return to work. Well, there you go. A trip back to the surgeon who stressed the importance of "let's get this done ASAP" with a March surgery date and the understanding that there will be no more aborted surgeries. This valve will be replaced, the scar tissue will be cleaned out, and you (Deb) are in a precarious position because you have only one working leaflet. I'm grateful that I've already developed an easy rapport with my surgeon. Although the consultation was mostly business, we still joked and laughed: "I guess we need to finish that knife fight we started," I said, and my surgeon laughed. But again, I've been chewing on the prospect of surgery again: This was almost two weeks ago. So here I am again, pondering my life. Thinking again of the what-ifs. What if God had intervened in last year's surgery as a sort of stay of execution? And if so, why did He give me only one more year? What if I don't survive surgery? What if I do? What if surgery goes sideways and I can no longer work? What if...what if...what if. Mike reminds me that though he's worried, just as he's worried with the other three surgeries, he knows that the surgery will go one of two ways: Either I will survive and move on in life with a fresh valve and whatever comes with that, or I will be in Heaven with my family and hopefully my pets who have gone before me. And last year, I remember the peace that washed over me in the shower a few weeks before the surgery: You're not going to need surgery; and the peace that washed over me again after the palate bleed when I was scared of endocarditis: You're going to be OK. (Side note: Why does the Lord always talk to me in the bathroom? For reals.) The Lord was reassuring me then. Still, despite my fears, I ponder the fact that had I not had that episode of shortness of breath, I might have gone back to work and something might have happened. Why did God intervene, if not to carry me through surgery again? And if not, He is still good. Miracles don't last forever. Subsequent surgeries happen. Valves clog with scar tissue, and some people need another valve surgery. |