Witness Marks: Stories From a Heart Transplant

 My son is currently facing one of those big life choices: which path to choose after college. He is currently pre-med, but we all know that while many are called, few are chosen. Meaning, not everyone who intends on going to medical school will actually find themselves on that journey. He has also set his sights on possibly applying to a PA (physician assistant) program as well. At any rate, his desired outcome is to work with patients in healthcare and he is diligently preparing himself now, however it may look in the future. Someone close to him recently said, "We've decided you need to go to medical school because one day you'll look back and regret not going all the way." Upon hearing this, I immediately bristled. While I believe my son is smart enough to get into medical school, if he chooses some other graduate degree program I will be proud of him and will never see him as not having gone "all the way." And here is why: My son's reasoning for goi...

 If I'm being completely honest, I did not like the person I became sometimes while I waited for transplant. In my defense, being told one needs a heart transplant is a fairly big deal. It's not something that can be coped with immediately. I needed every last minute of my 18-month wait to adjust. And even then--even now--it's a hard thing to wrap the mind around. In April of 2022 I was sitting in church pondering the words I was hearing. I don't know fully if it was said over the pulpit or if it was whispered by the Spirit, but I distinctly heard the instruction to ask the Lord to know what you need to strengthen and He will tell you. And that's exactly what I did. As I sat in sacrament meeting that day, I prayed to know what I could work on and improve. The answer: Patience and Long-suffering. A few short weeks later those words would need to become a mantra of sorts--actually, more of a chastisement as the transplant process began. The transplant team, while enth...

Over the next several weeks I would return to the emergency department several times stuck in a slow ventricular tachycardia rhythm. Each time they would reset my ICD/Pacemaker to pace me out of the tachy arrhythmia at a slower and slower rate, finally settling at 111 beats per minute. That meant I could receive therapeutic pacing at any heart rate higher than 111 bpm. My activity would have to be very limited until this was resolved either through healing, more ablations, or transplant.   On June 14 th  2022, we had finished all of the pre-transplant evaluation testing and had been approved by our insurance, all we had left was actually getting listed. I messaged Sarah, my transplant coordinator at the time and asked if there was any news on that front. Within hours, she called me and told me that I was officially listed for transplant. What a surreal feeling. At first, I was a little thrilled—we were one step closer to closing this chapter, I thought. On the other hand, I wa...

  Following news for my diagnosis, after my first visit to a hearth failure specialist, our next stop was back at the hospital to have an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) placed. We returned to the same same-day-surgery we had been to for my ablation and, to our delight, were assigned the same nurse. Clo was the absolute best in making sure we were comfortable and felt cared for. That day, I received a single lead, ICD pacemaker and was sent home within hours to hope and pray I would never need the device. Two weeks later, I landed back in the hospital due to chest pain. I thought it was just my gallbladder, but testing found nothing. It was then assumed it was my heart, so I had to stay over night for observation. A good dose of Toradol finally knocked that pain down and I returned home with no answeres. The only question we had answered during that incident was that we needed to find new doctors. During the entire 24 hours at the hospital, neither of my cardiologists ...

I woke from sedation still in the same trauma room in the emergency department. Aaron sat in a chair not far from my Gurney, looking tired and maybe a little sad. He was still holding onto  my coat, shirt, shoes... I guess as I came to, I laughed and said something about dreaming about Halloween. I never believed those stories about people acting off their rocker while coming out of sedation. I guess I do now. (Taken later that night at my brother's Halloween party that I insisted on going to.) The doctors released me that day, but not before a firm warning not to do anything exciting, not to drink any caffeine, and to find an electrophysiologist as soon as possible. And not before I overheard a nurse commenting on how she hadn't seen someone with a v-tach heart rate so high and still conscious and talking and questioned if I should really be going home. We left that day and tried not to think about what lay ahead. It was impossible not to google and search the internet and soc...

I can't believe I'm here, in front of my trusty Mac, again to write a blogpost--something I haven't done in a decade. I'm rusty. My fingers feel tethered by cobwebs. But I feel like this story needs to be shared.  (Picture taken on a hike with my husband the night before my heart broke.) October 23rd of 2021 was supposed to be a busy day for our family. We were visiting Cache Valley for the weekend with plans to clean our property (we own a home in northern Cache County that we planned on renting to a young couple of newlyweds who were attending Utah State University), do some shopping, and attend a halloween party that evening. It was a cold and rainy morning, so Aaron and I decided to workout indoors instead of running the hills of High Creek Canyon. Aaron took the treadmill and I picked up my jumprope to get in a quick cardio session.  I love jumping rope--I'm not particularly good at it, but when you get into a rhythm with the rope, Oh man, it feels good! I turn...