SPT–Breaking the Mold

I come from a line of amazing women.

They do however have a major flaw. They don’t have the best history when it comes to their hearts.

My Grandma passed away when she was very young and left behind five young children.

My Mom passed away way too early. She had raised her five children, but we weren’t done needing her.

This is my sister last year as she was getting ready for her heart transplant.

As a Mom of 5 young children I knew I had a responsibility to take care of myself to be here for my kids.

So a month ago I scheduled an appointment with my cardiologist. It had been 10 years since I had been to see him. With such a horrible family history the Dr immediately scheduled a stress/echo test. I wasn’t really worried. I figured with my life I would slam dunk a STRESS test. Unfortunately there was slight problem with the test. I was a lot little bit upset. I knew there wasn’t going to be a problem and there was… What the?!?

After the stress/echo the Dr wanted an angiogram and the speed at which he wanted it done made me more nervous. If I wasn’t going to have a heart attack before, I was while I was stressing out about the tests. So early Friday morning Big Daddy and I headed to the hospital. Dang I hate hospitals.

So they get me all prepped and ready for this silly, little test and the wheel me into the cath lab. I was so freaked out I didn’t even really pay attention to the pictures of my heart. The Dr told me everything looked great and there isn’t a problem with my heart and the stress test was wrong. Talk about blessed good news.

And then the problems started. As they were finishing the test I started bleeding internally at the incision site and my blood pressure crashed. Not a great way to end the test. They finally got me stable and back in the recovery for my 3 hours of bed rest. But being the overachiever that I am the Dr decided that I should probably stay down for 6 hours. Flat on my back. Not being able to get up for anything. The nurses would come in a check my bleed…by putting pressure on it and causing me to want to punch them in the face. They also were kind enough to give me pain medication. Unfortunately I wasn’t dealing well with the pain medication and had the nurse a little nervous. So between the bleed and not waking up from the pain meds I earned a night at the hospital. YUCK.

Finally about 7pm on Saturday I was released from the hospital…with a pretty impressive bruising and stupid pain.

So for the last few days I have been taking it easy and letting Big Daddy take up the slack and letting neighbors help out.

And wondering when I just suck it up and get back to my regular life…

with my PERFECT heart!