Throwback Thursday: My Heart (Part 1)
It’s Throwback Thursday, guys! That means it’s time to share with you a memory or two that has brought me to where I am today as a person and writer. For today, I decided to focus on a what may seem like a very vague topic: my heart.
I was born with a slightly unusual heart. You see, I was born with Wolff Parkinson White syndrome- a condition where the heart has more electrical pathways than it should, and causes various problems such as tachycardia. It also works with anxiety in a doomed tandem. There were some good jokes about my heart I always liked to make- but those are no longer necessary. Why? Well, I got it fixed two years ago.
My doctor, when I was a teenager, tried to talk me into a procedure called ablation. In an ablation, they run a thin catheter through your veins to take a look at the heart. When they find potential culprit nerves, they activate it with an electric stimulation- and, once they find the true culprits, they burn it off with radiation or freeze it to death. Point blank: they can rid you of the nerves sending your body into a frenzy.
That said, I didn’t go for the procedure until about ten years after it was recommended. I was too scared of needles, too scared anesthesia would kill me. I honestly felt traumatized for a while that they even wanted to do something to my heart. I suppose it was just my childish view that it was dangerous- because actually, most procedures are much safer on kids!
Well, two years ago in May, I finally got my ablation. I remember the procedure fairly well to a point: I remember convulsing on the table I was strapped down to as they tried to find the nerves with activation. Then, as they were prepared to take out the buggers, they put me deeper under the anesthesia than I’d been before. I was soon asleep.
When I woke up, they were already preparing to move me out of the surgical theater. The doctor smiled at me as I was rolled out on my hospital bed, asking me, “How does it feel not to have WPW anymore?” The words relieved me. It was finally over! Well, mostly.
The hardest part of that day wasn’t the convulsing on the table. It was the fact I had to stay in a very specific position and had to have my legs locked down so that my body could heal from the catheter. I had to stay like that for four hours, guys. FOUR. HOURS. It was so painful to move after growing numbed by the brace keeping it down. I can’t stress it enough. It hurt, bad.
That said, I’m glad I got the procedure. A year later, I was planning a trip to help my emotional heart without any worries that the three nerves I had burned would bother me. As for the details of that trip… Well, let’s save that for next time. Okay?