V Tach, the MRI, and the Dread

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Day 10 of Jumping into Fall & Recovering from Summer

Fear

Last night I woke up out of a dream to the sound of a man shouting, “April!” Only it wasn’t multiple shouts. It was just one shout, and it must have been in my dream, not in real life because Alan is the only grown man in our house, and he was sound asleep beside me.

It was 3am, I had to pee so bad I couldn’t stand it, but I didn’t dare walk down the dark hallway because of all the alarmed thoughts in my brain. These are the kind of thoughts you get when you think you hear a man shout your name in the middle of the night.

Maybe it’s completely irrational, but is anyone truly expected to think rationally at 3am, when woken from a deep sleep? What was the dream even about? I cannot remember, but it was a highly detailed dream, and at 3 am the dream and the shout were both fresh on my mind. The shout wasn’t related to the dream, I distinctly remember reasoning to myself, because that wasn’t what the dream was about.

So there I was, needing to pee so badly, but terrified to go down the hallway.

Gradually, I drifted back off to sleep, only to wake up an hour later with the same problem. Not the shout, just the need to pee. And yet, I was still a bit afraid.

4 am feels so much safer than 3am though, so I did the thing any mature adult would do, the thing you used to do when you were like 10.

I made a dash for it! No, just kidding, but this was just as silly. I eased out of bed, crept ever so quickly and quietly to the bathroom, silently shut the door, and locked it.

Normally, I’d just march in there and barely even close the door since everyone is asleep, but last night I still had some irrational thoughts going on.

“If he called my name to get me out of bed, and then get the jump on me to kidnap or murder me or whatever, then I must be quiet so he doesn’t know I’m out of bed. A locked door will make a racket. Alan will hear him trying to open the door.”

When I finished in the bathroom, I slowly opened the door, and peeked down the hallway. Then I flipped the light off and ran back to my bed and jumped in as quickly as possible. Can’t you just see it?

It’s all sort of crazy, right, but that’s how distinctly I heard the “April!!!” that woke me from my dreaming.

But I suppose it must have actually been only the dream itself.

There’s more fear and dread going on in my brain this week than is normally there. I think that sort of sets me up for craziness like this.

Tomorrow is my cardiac MRI, and the truth is I don’t want to do it. I tried to not even do it at all. Repeatedly, I told them, “I had one only 2 years ago. It was normal.”

But they didn’t care. They said it was time for another, and the last one wasn’t even done with the dye that they put in your veins. Here’s where I wrote about that.

“Oh well, I better wait until school starts to do it.”

Why do I dread it so much?

Ah, it’s a medical procedure. MRIs don’t bother me at all, but IVs most certainly do, and that’s what I don’t want to do. I’m a medical chicken, okay? I’d rather not be poked, prodded, bled, exposed, etc. etc.

Plus, it’s the bigger problem that I try to pretend doesn’t exist, the whole v-tach thing. The whole heart problem that makes no one ever quite sure what to do with me. You see, v-tach is a big deal. Mine isn’t too bad. It could be much worse, but it’s just bad enough that I have to be closely monitored, maybe for the rest of my life.

V-tach serves as a reminder of my own mortality, of the frailty of life. We are all dying. Okay I know, I’m a regular barrel of monkeys over here. But it’s there, and it can’t always be ignored.

What power do I have over death, though?

There was a question in this Bible study I’m reading. This question makes me doubt that the author of the book has never faced a life threatening health condition. She asked what you would be sad about if you were told that you would die tomorrow. The author postulated that we would think, “I want to see my children grow up or see my grandchildren or travel.”

I shook my head because that’s not it at all. That’s not actually what I thought about. Not even close.

You don’t worry about what you will personally miss out on. It’s your people who you worry about. These children, this family, they are not at all ready to go on without their mother. They literally need me. I strongly feel that they do. Yes, they have their dad, but we fulfill very different roles in their lives. I’m the softer one more accessible one, and they need me.

I thought about my mom, my mother who has spent her entire life taking care of everybody else and does not deserve to have to outlive her children. She still needs me. I can’t leave her.

Worst of all, I even came across articles like this that make it all too real. Y’all! She was my age, she had 4 boys, and she had one of the heart conditions I’m being tested for.

Yes! I was thinking about this stuff.

Maybe it seems ridiculous, but with the v-tach and the things I’m being tested for it was a natural place for my brain to go. It could not be helped.

There’s Alan, and I think he would be devastated, but I also think he would be okay. He’s a mature, adult man with all these children depending on him.

Suddenly, I was giving Alan instructions on what to do if I pass out. Call 911. Do CPR. Put me on an ambulance. If the v-tach ever gets out of control, and doesn’t stop itself, it turns into v-fibrillation, and that’s cardiac arrest.

But we’ve talked about it now. Alan knows what to do in case of emergency, and now it’s time to stop dwelling on it. I fully believe that this MRI will come back “normal.” And then, so long as my v-tach runs stay under 16 beats, I don’t have to have surgery. Of course, they are already at 13 beats, but they happen so seldomly, I guess that’s why it’s okay.

For a couple of years, I wasn’t having v-tach runs, but they’ve made a comeback for 2018.

There are so many battles in life that we have only to trust in the Lord because we simply can’t fix them. I have no more power over my heart than I do over the weather.

I’ll keep on praying, keep on hoping, keep on trusting God. God’s got this.

If you’ve been following the news, there’s been some talk lately about high school yearbooks. Ha! Well, I think my senior quote in my high school year book suits this situation perfectly:

I don’t have the grace in myself to go through all this uncertainty, but I do have God’s grace. He sees me through this, and I do believe that everything will be okay. Even if the MRI did show problems, we will treat those issues and get on with life.

We are strong, courageous, fearless, and undaunted. For the Lord Our God IS with Us wherever we go.

Don’t worry. I haven’t fallen off the dramatic cliff here. This was where I was at this week, but there are plenty of other, happier things going on.