Quite the journey, this thing.
I can usually wrap my brain around events or situations that crop up in my life that affect me, and I think I’m finally ready for this next venture.
I’ve been processing just what it means to have severe aortic stenosis, and what I’ve discovered has been a bit unsettling, mainly because I’m mostly asymptomatic. I don’t have the usual edema, breathing problems, or chest tightness or pain symptoms, but I do have the dizziness, which has been severe enough that I’ve been confined to my home unless I’ve got an escort.
Funny side note there. Hubbin has been my escort both at home and out into the ‘wild’ (shopping, taking walks, or simply just getting out of the house so I don’t go completely stir crazy!), and he holds my hand or I’m holding on to his arm depending on just how bad it gets with movement. People think we’re still madly in love, even after ten years of marriage. I won’t disillusion them.
Anyway, I’m about to have valve replacement surgery and it seems it can be broken down into two possible outcomes, either I make it through to recovery or I don’t. The first has its own set of solutions, as does the second, so breaking it down here and typing the obvious second factor, first.
What if I don’t make it through surgery?
Then I’m done and then others take over what I’ve been doing and eventually erase my physical footprint in this world.
What if I make it through surgery?
Well, then there’s the “Everything went great” or “…there were complications…”
If there were complications, then I’ll be in the right place for those.
If “Everything went great”, then comes the hard part, for me mostly, although there are a lot more factors and players. Recovery in the hospital, tubes, pain meds, and multiple types of therapy as I learn my abilities and limitations to this “overhaul” that will be keeping my heart going.
And then there are the next steps that will send me home with this new information and hardware, while learning to keep it simple and to not overstress myself when I have good days. I see this last part as perhaps the biggest struggle of the whole process – I usually overdo EVERYTHING when I’ve got extra energy! According to documentation, I won’t be permitted to do much of anything that I’m doing now, at least for the next six to eight weeks. Do you hear that? This means that everything that I’ve been wanting to do or finish has to be done in the next five days or it won’t get done until Christmas!
So I’ve just gone down another rabbit hole – Christmas shopping and planning NOW! Woot Woot! Another positive result of having such drama in my life!
Out for now to process on that last little bit, and perhaps start my watercolor Christmas cards today.
I might post pictures of the completed ones…check back soon!
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