No New Bad News

No new bad news! This is my new health standard.

As I alluded to in this post I went to Mayo for some testing and follow up appointments. The goals were:

• To make sure the inflammation in my heart didn’t get worse.
• To make sure nothing else got worse.
• To make a plan for what to do about my arrhythmias.

How It Went

I had a PET scan, device check, blood tests, EKG, and an echocardiogram, along with appointments with my doctors. Fortunately all of the test results were good, AKA not worse than before! The inflammation in my heart seemed to have gone down, which was one of the primary concerns going into the appointments.

Once this nugget of information was determined (and then celebrated with a trip to Olive Garden with my mom who is a saint for coming with me to all of these appointments) it was time to decide what to do about my arrhythmias.

There were two options:

• Switch to different medications and hope for the best.
• Have an ablation and hope for the best.

I am currently on an anti-arrhythmia medication that works really well for me, but it has some pretty serious long-term effects. Since I have already been taking it for 6 months I shouldn’t be on it for much longer. There are other medications options, but they are limited.

I decided to go the surgery route, in hopes to limit the amount of medications I have to take. I had a similar surgery in June 2018, but this one will be a little different since the doctors will access my heart from the inside and outside. This will take place sometime in March. I’ll be taking a half-dose of my current medication for the next few weeks and will then stop completely so that it will be out of my system by the time I’m scheduled to have surgery.

This means that I’m not allowed to do anything more physical than short, easy walks and workouts (pilates, barre, etc.).

Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that I’ll never have arrhythmias again or that I’ll be 100% ok now until forever. I was hoping that I would get that peace of mind, but I won’t. That’s the toughest part about this whole thing.

On Hope

I don’t know why, but any time I walk into a doctor’s office my first instinct is to cry. One of my doctors was telling me all good news and all I could do was slowly nod my head and hold back tears. This could be because I have PTSD from previous doctor visits or that I’m doing everything I can to suppress any emotion that my body just gives up and opens up the flood gates, but really I think it’s because I’m scared to be too hopeful.

Hope is a very powerful thing and can help you get through anything. Hope can lead to positivity and that positivity can give you the strength to overcome what you are facing.

The only thing I have control of is how I feel. I can’t change anything about what my heart is or isn’t doing, but I can change my attitude. I can feel grateful for literally everything else in my life instead of crying over things I cannot change.

It’ll be hard. I have had high hopes in the past and have been absolutely crushed when things did not go as planned. This is why I’m terrified of being too hopeful. It can hurt so incredibly much.

I’m not giving up on any future dreams, but I am treading cautiously. I am going to work every day to be grateful and appreciate what I have. I hope that at some point in my life I can look back on everything that has happened and be thankful for how I grew and what I learned.

I bought this necklace to have a daily hope reminder.

Here’s the product description: “It’s okay to feel scared. It’s okay to feel lost. It’s okay to struggle. It’s okay to fail. It’s okay to be going through something difficult. It’s okay. You are okay. Do not give up. Do not stop hoping. Do not stop believing. You are on your way to change, to growth, to the other side of this. I know you can’t pretend that this isn’t hard. But hope isn’t about pretending that dark times don’t exist, it’s about believing that darkness will not last forever. It’s trusting that your heart will heal. It’s choosing possibility over unfeasibility. So please just ditch logic, ditch the odds, and hold onto hope. A single drop of hope can be a very powerful thing – the universe loves a persistent heart.”

Perfect, right? I am okay. I will not stop hoping.