It’s been a tough few months – Sandy Hook broke my heart (and everyone else’s), and now whenever they talk about guns at all on the news, I have to turn it off completely (for or against, I just can’t take it. Children died. It’s not about politics and your rights. What about their rights to grow up?). The thirteen month old child in Georgia who was shot and killed made me so physically ill I had to leave the gym when the news story came on again. I can’t look at that child’s face, I just can’t. And now three people died while celebrating an achievement that is monumental in their lives. I know I’ll never run a marathon – I don’t have the desire, stamina, or quite frankly, the healthy heart – and I’m jealous of those who can. But i still am thrilled for friends and family who finish their marathon. It’s something to be proud of.
We all need to look for the helpers right now. And we all need to find a way to be helpers in our own lives. Being good is a conscious choice – we can all be better. Although we’re far from good Christians – Hub and I will often comment on our thoughts and actions, “We need to be more Christian about this.” And it helps. Thinking about the example that Christ set – it helps me.
So, he’s not really riding it here. He’s attempting to walk while the tricycle is underneath him. But hey, it’s a step in the right direction. Also, unrelated, but can you believe that this is mid-March? Brr.
Living in “Capitol Hill” (I put that in quotes because we live “near” Capitol Hill), you get used to hearing certain phrases as a parent. Even though our child is not yet two, we have already entered the worry race that is “Where will he go to school?”
Bub’s godparents have two lovely children, and as it turns out one was not accepted at the school of their choice. As it turns out, it is also the school of our choice, and even though they – and we – meet all the qualifications, it seems as if it’s no longer a sure thing. In discussing school options, the mom commented to me that several people have said (rather snobbily), “It’s too bad you’re not in-bounds for Brent.”
Brent Elementary School, the creme de la creme of public elementary schools, has a reputation as being the end-all-be-all elementary school on the Hill. People use parents’ addresses, buy apartments in bounds and live there during the week, and game the system in all kinds of ways to get in-bounds for Brent. People will pay substantially more for a house in-bounds for Brent. All of this for an elementary school.
Nothing in life is certain, and it seems as if those are extreme measures to go to in order that your child go to the “right” school with the “right” people. I’m not sure if the pressure is there on political figures to send their child to public school – because if you can afford to live in-bounds for Brent, it certainly seems as if you can afford private school. The mania that surrounds elementary school also seems foolish, since the kids still have to go to middle school and high school. In the District, at least, the public options for those are much less appealing.
Clearly, our educational system is broken if the only people who can go to the “good” schools are the ones lucky enough to afford certain neighborhoods. As a parent, I want to balance the obvious importance of education with a more laid-back view that there is no one, end-all-be-all school. No matter where Bub goes, I will educate him myself in addition. And I don’t want him to think that money is the only way to success – although our society keeps trying to prove me wrong on that score.
Thanks to all of you who have kept up with our blog in my absence. Every time I had an idea for a post, I thought, it’s been too long since I’ve written so I won’t write. A lot of sense that makes. I decided today to just go for it, and to aim to write once a week as a more modest and hopefully achievable goal. As many of you know between starting a new job and dealing with a major health crisis, it hasn’t been an easy year for us. Thanks for all your support and we look forward to continuing to share with you.
It’s the last day of the year, and with Bub home from school there’s not much time to recap. I have succumbed to the television and we are watching “Dinosaur Train.” Trains and dinosaurs – what’s not to like?
2012 was a great year. I realized this morning that it’s Bub’s first year from start to finish – where we went from this:
First dip in the ocean in Rio!
to this:
We celebrated Bub’s first birthday, Wif’s PhD graduation and new job, and Hub did a lot of great work making our house even more great. We also dealt with some not so great things, like Wif’s illness. And of course, some to-be-expected issues, like these lovely stitches:
All in all, 2013 is looking brighter for us. I’m starting cardiac rehab, which will hopefully get me on the path to better health. I’m starting my second semester of teaching, but have some familiar students and familiar classes. So we will toast tonight with some close friends to a better and healthier 2013.
Well, the Christmas Season is upon us! Happy Holidays from the Wif, Hub, and Bub family. As you might have noticed, we have been a little remiss in our posting. We are however, here, and have survived a tough semester dealing with illness, a new job, and all the general stresses that come with being working parents.
To get the house back in tip-top shape, I came up with the idea of doing “The 12 Days of Choremas.” You know, instead of Christmas. So festive! What better way to celebrate than by cleaning the chandelier, organizing the pantry, and decluttering toys?
Dec. 25: Toss old items in the fridge & freezer; wipe down the fridge & freezer (I am organizing this around my trash day so you may want to adjust accordingly)
Dec. 26: Maintain granite countertops
Dec 27: Clean and degrease the oven hood
Dec. 28: Clean the dishwasher
Dec. 29: Clean chandelier
Dec. 30: Organize the pantry
Dec. 31: Vacuum the living room/basement furniture
It has come to my attention that I need to “take it easy.”
Oh, how I hate this phrase. When people tell me to take it easy, I want to hit them. I want to say, “YOU take it easy, I’ll be over here getting things done.”
However, when you’re dealing with an illness, you really can’t just get things done, or you’ll end up passed on the floor. Sometimes literally. I was so tired yesterday I almost fell asleep in a meeting. Granted, the meeting was one that needed to be fallen asleep in, but that’s beside the point.
Finishing my PhD was a monumental task – and from what I’ve been told, many people have a hard time dialing it back and “taking it easy” once they’re done, because you’re used to the frenetic pace of balancing work, family, and doctoral studies. I felt no sense of relief once it was over, and looking back, I should have taken more of a conscious break, even if it was just not showing up to the office for a month and wandering aimlessly around DC. Wandering aimlessly sounds really nice about now, BTW. Or napping aimlessly.
Unfortunately, there was too much to do. We have a toddler. I have a new job. We have things we want to accomplish. And then right when I thought, maybeI should take a break, I got sick.
What I’ve realized is that there will always be too much to do, and perhaps taking it easy means not beating myself up that I can’t do it all and do it all well. Yes, I want a sparkling clean house that is decorated and neat, but right now, it’s not going to happen. We have a lovely, warm home that has random items strewn about by a toddler but that is full of love. I guess I’ll take that instead. Yes, I want to start doing research studies so that I can get that tenure-track position I think I’d like to have – but just getting into class and teaching my students is a success at the moment. Yes, I’d love to be getting up at 5:30am and exercising, but given my recovery it’s more essential that I get extra rest and take it slow.
Putting first things first and letting not first things go has never been my strong suit. It’s time to learn before I fall over. Any suggestions?
Sometimes when Bub is having a temper tantrum over, say, not being allowed to eat dog food (kid ate a WHOLE MOUTHFUL this morning and then said, “Mmmmmm.” Sigh.), we sing a little jingle – “Get on over it, get up on over it!”
This morning, I am singing this to myself. Over the looooong weekend (made longer by the fact that daycare was closed on Thu/Fri), I found this great blog for women who’ve had heart attacks called Heart Sisters.
My favorite post so far is “Get over yourself: How to stop boring people with your heart attack story.” Basically, after a certain point in time, you have to stop complaining because no one cares. And then you become a real big bore to be around, because let’s face it, everyone’s got their own [expletive deleted] to deal with.
One reason not to complain is because, apparently, complaining makes you feel worse (this is why Hub cuts off my venting about stuff after a certain point, because it does not always help to let it all out).
This is not to say you should be Pollyanna and pretend you’re fine when you are not. If you’re sick, and need help, then get it. Trying to pretend like you’re not suffering doesn’t make it go away, and repressing feelings and just “being positive” (as many people will tell you to do when you’re sick) doesn’t allow you to work through those emotions. You’re best to deal with them and move on to a more positive place.
I’m trying to work right now to live my normal life, with some adjustments while I get back up to speed, and duck off that normal path when I need to in order to take care of myself and “deal” with the illness. Pretending it didn’t happen, or that my heart is what it was before, or acting like I’ll be running a marathon in six months (I can confidently tell you that I will never run a stupid marathon, nor do I want to) is just plain dumb. What happened has happened. Signs are good that I’ll make a full recovery and will go on to lead a happy, healthy, long life (fingers crossed) but pretending like this didn’t happen or that it didn’t shake my sense of self in some ways is futile.
So I’m going to get up on over it, and see what I can see from the top of this new hill I’ve had to climb.
For some more posts from Heart Sisters that are great on this topic, check out:
I also want to say “thank you” to the friends who’ve sent emails, Facebook messages, and the like over the past few weeks – I know I haven’t gotten a chance to respond to everyone but as I get back into the swing of things I will!
Our daycare center director let me know the other day that Bub would be staying put in his current classroom. Well, classroom is strong. Let’s call it a “room.” I nodded and said, “Sure, no problem.” Unfortunately that is my reaction to everything, which does not allow me to actually figure out how I feel about a particular situation.
So is it no problem? I don’t know. Part of me worries because when I walk in the room, some of the little girls (who are a couple, if not a few, months older than Bub) will enunciate clearly “mommy,” “bye bye,” “see ya,” and “shoe.” My Bub is more in the “Ba Ba De Ba Doo Dah!” phase, which is completely great and where he should be. To my ears he also says tons of “words,” although they are actually parts of words and then lots of babbling. You know, Doh, Buh, and BuhBuh. That would be Dog (or Duck, sometimes), Bird (or Bear, or a number of other things that begin with B), and Bubbles.
It’s so easy to get freaked out that your child’s development is off course, and early day care doesn’t help because so many parents want there to be a curriculum starting from, you know, birth. I loved the infant room he was in at daycare because he was genuinely loved. There was no pressure, no agenda, no nothing, just cuddles and naps and milk whenever he wanted it. When he moved on to a higher ratio room (4 to 1 as opposed to 3 to 1), I was not happy. I don’t know who took it harder, me or him.
So now he won’t be moving on with the older kids to the next room, and at first I felt like I should feel upset about it. But I am walking away from that feeling, because I have to keep a laser-like focus on what is best for Bub. And what is best for Bub is to stay put. He will remain in the classroom with a lower ratio, where is is familiar, and where he can continue to go “Bah Da Be Da DOO bah!” without any pressure to move on. I want him to be smart just like every parent, but more importantly I want him to be himself, and he is happy where he is. So I am too.
A clapping happy Bub
Two posts in a row. I’m not going to make a habit of it. Once I started writing though, it seemed the floodgates opened.
I’ve been talking a lot about what’s been happening with my heart here, but haven’t included that much detail on the procedures. It’s all a little scary to go through, quite honestly. I came across a video of a woman, about 38 years old, who had gone through a similar experience with VT and ablation, and it was super helpful to me. Actually it got me out of bed this morning – thinking, if she’s doing OK, then maybe I will be OK too. So I’m going to share a little more.
My doctors did a pretty good job of explaining the procedures to me, but a lot of it is beyond me to explain to others. As I like to say, I’m not that kind of doctor. This video explains ablation for VT (ventricular tachycardia) and is straightforward if you are interested.
I’ve now had three electrophysiological (EP) studies and two ablations. The first EP study was in 2009 right after I had the fainting and VT episode that landed me in the hospital, when they initially diagnosed me with myocarditis. The doctor (one of the same on the team that’s working with me now) couldn’t get my heart to go into the rhythm. This time around, for the first ablation procedure, they didn’t sedate me at all (besides some local numbing where they went in to the vein) and were able to get my heart to go into VT and ablate one “morphology” (one of the wrong electrical pathways my heart was using), but there were at least two more and because the procedure would be very extensive the doctor at the time chose not to continue to ablate those other two. So they implanted the implantable cardioverter defibullator device.
Unfortunately, I kept going into a lower rate VT (about 110 bpm) even on beta blockers. So they decided to do a second ablation. This one was more extensive and they were able to get the other morphologies. Then they tried really hard, through both electrical current and using adrenaline, to get my heart back into VT, and it didn’t go. So it’s a very good sign that the morphologies are gone.
From what I understand, there’s no guarantee that the VT won’t come back – that because of my scar tissue from the myocarditis, it won’t create additional morphologies – but the more time that passes after this ablation without any more VT, the better the prognosis gets. I still need the ICD because VT is so deadly, but it’s possible that I won’t need it by the time the battery runs out in 10 years or so.
I also understand that some people experience pre-ventricular contractions (PVCs) after the ablation, sometimes for weeks and sometimes for months. I’m hoping I’m “cured” but I also want to be realistic.
Day one post ablation, things are going well except for being really scared last night about the VT coming back. One day at a time, I suppose – and I’m going to try to take it easy so I can heal.
Thanks to everyone so much for your well wishes on the blog, via Facebook, and email. I really feel supported and loved. We’ll definitely try to respond to everyone individually but just wanted to say a blanket “thank you” to all of you for your concern.
