It rained yesterday from just after I got out of bed with Matthew, having given up my desire for five more minutes of horizontal, until lunch time. The sky here in South Carolina lets go in these bursts as if the sky is assaulting the ground; not at all like the endless mists and drizzle of Oregon to which I'm more accustomed. Here it rains so hard the rain bounces off the earth, nothing about it gentle, amassing in our driveway and in puddles as the lawn is unable to cope the the sheer quantity of falling water.
I watch it run down the sloping curve of our road, pulling in leaves and dirt it has pounded loose. The water cannot sink in fast enough. The lawn is overwhelmed.
I think that's how I've been feeling since October 24th. Heart failure. It has exploded into our life, a sudden storm, and I don't know how to take it in. I remember back to the long months after I was diagnosed with breast cancer and how even in the midst of chemo when I was aching and bald I would still wake in the morning and with shock be reminded, "I have cancer." How it would wound me every time, even months later. A cancer diagnosis is just too big to take in one gulp. The puddles collect on the surface waiting for entry but it just doesn't stop raining long enough to take in.
Little things make heart failure real. Even though I looked up the results of my echo-cardiogram right after I had it; even though I knew by any definition I had heart failure; even after my oncologist referred me to the cardiologist; even on the day of my appointment it didn't seem real. Maybe I would walk into my appointment and the cardiologist would send us away laughing. Maybe when he came in he would say, "You were just dehydrated and it threw everything off." Maybe he would order another echo-cardiogram and that one would show nothing wrong with me. Maybe.
And those words, how they wound. Heart failure. Failure. My heart is failing. It's too big for me to take in. Heart medication and ejection fraction and EKG and prognosis and, just, failure.
Somehow the bacteria that was meant to cure me is killing my heart.
Daily the little things sting and make it real. The shortness of breath when I climb the stairs, those two little pills in the morning and again at night. More doctors visits, the words repeating over and over until they are no longer so foreign. Heart. Failure. Heart failure.
We are in the process of changing cardiologists to one who understands that, in part, he is a conduit of the storm raining down on us. Josh and I really like him. We met yesterday and our liking of him began looking out into the rain from his office. The staff were so nice, much warmer than the other office staff. We asked Dr. Vaz's nurse how long we had with him. She laughed softly and replied, "As long as you need." He stayed with us 45 minutes. 45 minutes! 45 minutes of explaining and questions and soaking it all in. Turns out we actually attend church together but we are so new to town that we don't recognized everyone yet.
He confirmed some of what we were starting to learn. The damage is irreversible. Permanent. Heart failure. The chemo that saved me from cancer is the culprit. While buying me time from a horrible cancer death, I would not likely still be alive today without it, that same chemo is now slowly killing me. My heart failure will likely progress. At best the medicines I am currently taking are holding it at bay. Because most heart failure patients are much, much older there are no studies looking beyond 2 or 4 years survival.
So we don't know much. Crazy huh? How much we don't know, can't control about life. The rain will fall or not, the wind will blow or not, and I, Stephanie Sanders, I say this gently, am not God. I don't get control over the wind and rain, and I must relinquish the timing of my death. I can't be in control. On my own I fail, I flounder in the storm, under the pounding weight of it all.
Any one who thinks peace is a simple easy affair has never really struggled, had their whole life thrown into the fire again and again, burning away illusion and challenging peace. "Peace is something intimately associated with war. Peace is the result of victory. Peace demands of me a constant struggle. Without that struggle, I'll never be able to have peace...War is the greatest obstacle to the easy way. But in the end we have to love it, as the religious should love his disciplines." wrote St. JoseMaria Escriva in The Way.
Dr. Vaz talked about learning to do with less or without salt. And it struck me. Another wound. I don't have edema. I don't have high blood pressure. Yet. Why? Argh, it's stupid and selfish, but really, no salt? Really? It will tax my heart? But isn't medication and chest pain and shortness of breath and tests and appointments and looking at my children and realizing that I might not be here tomorrow to share in their laughter, in their special moments, isn't not getting to grow old with Josh enough? This tiny straw of salt makes it real in a way it wasn't before and I mourn.
I have another heart test tomorrow and again on Friday. More opportunities to soak it in. I am not immortal. I cannot control my number of days. More opportunities to go to war with the selfish side of my self, more opportunities to battle for peace and battle for letting God hold my life in the palm of His hand.
"She is clothed in strength and dignity, and she laughs at the future."
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