The Feisty Fontan

The most personal reason I ended up in the hospital is dumb ass reason. Everyone that knows me knows that I am pretty stubborn. My stubbornness is legendary. Many say my stubbornness and determination is the reason I survived my Fontan as a kid. I hate to say that my stubbornness also nearly killed me.

For months, heck- even a year, I had been having symptoms, but not the ones that were easy to ignore. My main symptom was right there in front of me every day…my feet were swollen beyond belief. I had no ankles. I could only wear one pair of shoes. Looking back at the pictures, I am surprised at how hideous I let them get.

Yet, I shrugged it off as being “just my feet” and kept on working 12 hours a day. My husband would ride my case about how hard I was pushing myself; I worked 14 hour days. My mom came to visit and had to hide the scared look on her face; I worked 16 hour days. When my doctor called and told me they could fit me early because they were concerned about my symptoms, I told them I couldn’t take off work with short notice.

People who are sick can’t wok 70 hours a week. People in poor health can’t work 4am-8pm three days in a row. People who are fragile can’t be bad ass HR Managers.

When the occasion suits me, I will brag about being a heart kid and talk about my surgery and all that I’ve been thru. But as a female manager in predominately male and very demanding workplace, it was best for me to put on the brave face I honed as heart kid and put any weakness aside and just keep working.

Plus, working, especially an intense and demanding job, was a marker for me to prove what a bad ass heart patient I was. In my head I would say “so and so doesn’t work with her heart defects or so and so only works part time, I am so much better off.”

In hindsight, I was a dumb ass. You can be sick and still be strong. If I was really as brave as I like to think I am, I would have had enough courage to speak up and advocate for myself. I would have been brave enough to face the reality of being sick.  Heck, I would have been brave enough to collect my own poop!

Instead, thru my stubbornness, I let myself get way sicker than I should have been. I ignored the pleas and concerns of my husband and parents. Developing the PLE may have been inevitable or unavoidable, but the poop and dumb ass factors were totally under my control. The poop and the dumb ass factors could have spared me 10 days in the hospital.