Perfection

I’m going to jump right from sorrow to babies.

After a year of heart medication my ejection fraction went from 27 to normal, and I was less tired and less breathless.

Dr. Heart took me off the pills to see if my heart would pump well without assistance. I had to wait for six months before getting another MUGA scan to measure my heart function. Near the end of it I was getting insanely impatient.

The glaring green hands on my biological clock were killing me, but I had to wait for the green light.

Nurse Heart makes fun of me now for being so impatient. I thought Dr. Heart was slow-playing me, so I called to bump my test up a month. My plea worked.

All the anxiety in the world didn’t change the results of my test. (There goes the straightforward mind-body connection theory.) My heart passed and we threw the condoms in the garbage. I wish I had cut them up into little pieces and then burned them in a cathartic bonfire, or at least mailed them to a country with limited access to birth control; it would have made a great story.

We were lucky: we got right to it and got pregnant within three months of trying. I felt amazing. The shift from cautious to all-out-cardio quickly killed my breakable -complex.

And then I was back to fragile with a teeny tiny embryo in my belly. I was happy and comfortable; I couldn’t ask for anything more. My life was perfect. I didn’t feel completely healthy when I stopped taking the heart medication, but as soon as that embryo burrowed into my uterus lining, I started feeling better and better.

But it was a long journey. I was still classified as sick, because I was diagnosed with Fibro, and I still sometimes think this is the story of somebody with life-long health issues.

It got worse – scary worse – before I woke up in the hospital as a new person. I’ll tell you all about the bad stuff soon.

Are you there sorrow? It's me, Jenn

When I was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, Dr. Heart told me I had a thirty-three per cent chance of getting better, a thirty-three per cent chance of staying the same, and a thirty-three per cent chance of getting worse.

That left me with a good chance I wouldn’t have a strong enough heart to ever get pregnant. Hearts in pregnant bodies have to work harder than other hearts.

I stared at the glow-in-the-dark hands of my biological clock for about four months before writing this diary entry:

1:50 am – I am struggling with the possibility that my heart will never be able to handle pregnancy.

The waiting list for adoption is long. Baby = forever; five-year-old = five year wait.

Adopting a child from another country costs at least $25,000 - more than the down payment of our house. We’ll never have that kind of money.

1:54 am – I have to brace myself for the possibility that my heart cannot handle pregnancy. Otherwise, I might break down.

I am rigid. I wonder if this is related to my heart condition. I wonder if everything is somehow connected to my heart.

Tim’s right… this is ridiculous. I can’t use the limited information that I have about my body to hold myself hostage. There is still life to live. It’s not about waiting for test results. But it’s hard to ignore that flashing red light.

I’ve been cautious ever since the episode of ‘vertigo’ in the shower. This has possibly saved my life countless times. My body was systematically shutting down to stay safe. Survival instinct kicked in, stopped me from feeling too much and realising too much stress, because my heart is bogged down by stress.

In the end, my fail-safe will be total shut down.

Can death possibly be a survival mechanism?

Double Up

When I was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy my husband and I had a heart-to-heart with Dr. Heart about babies.

Now, I`ve never been the girl who gets gushy over babies.  They cry, they puke, they poo and they can`t make jokes.  I was convinced I would be the one to break a baby if I had to hold her.  Despite all of that, I wanted my own, but not until I was about thirty.

A few things changed since I made those plans.  My biological clock started ticking very softly when my mom-in-law was sick; we thought about starting our family so she could meet her grandbabies.  And when she was dying, we really thought about it. 

It turned out to be a good thing that we decided not to bump up our baby plans, because they didn`t find the cardiomyopathy until three months after she died.  If I got pregnant with a sick heart, I`m not sure we would have made it.

The clock got louder when I had my first snuggle with a baby.  He nuzzled into the hollow of my neck and I melted.  He was so beautiful and helpless, and he wanted me to love him.  Me.  With my past.  With my flaws.  My love was enough for this small baby.  And his love for me in that moment was so innocent and pure, with no guilt, no demands, no judgement. 

I didn`t know babies could show love until that moment.

The rapid tick-tock shocked me when Dr. Heart very gently told us that we could not get pregnant while I was taking my heart pills.  He asked what birth control we were currently using (The Pill), and told us why it was important to double-up (always use condoms or spermicidal foam as well).

The meds I needed to fix my heart were known to cause major birth defects, including under-developed skull, and could also cause foetal death.  My own heart pulled the plug on my clock.  But it was one of those old-fashioned wind-up clocks.  Daylight charged the glow-in-the-dark hands; it was the only thing I could see as I was trying to fall asleep every night.