The Feisty Fontan

I keep using the phrase “how the mighty have fallen” to joke about the drastic change my life has taken in the past month.

“How the mighty have fallen…last month I was drinking Diet Cokes with abandon, today I am peeing into a vacuum.”

“How the mighty have fallen…last month I was sipping craft beers by the beach, this week I am preparing for a liver biopsy.”

“How the mighty have fallen…last month I was working 60 hours a week, now I have a prescription for supplemental oxygen.”

It’s not that my health itself has really changed in the past month, but my awareness and acceptance of it certainly has. (Well, I am still working on the acceptance part….) My oxygen stats were just as low a month ago when I was working all those long hours as they are now. And while I honestly felt a lot crappier then, I was using a little coping mechanism called denial to power my way thru it. But, there is nothing like passing out in the bathroom, spending 10 days in the hospital and having doctors talk to you about open-heart surgery to bring you back to reality.

I have a complex relationship with my heart defect. Some days I want to be proud of all that makes me who I am and of the strength I’ve gained from having gone thru all my heart stuff. Other days, I do not want to have a heart problem, I do not want to think about having a heart problem and I do not want to be a heart patient. I’ve had about 6 months’ worth of days where I felt the latter.

As I sit here post hospital stay, but still at the beginning of my journey, I am hoping that I have learned a couple things the last few weeks. I’ve learned that in order to really be mighty I need to take care of myself. If I want to be super mighty, I need to accept my limitations. I’ve worked on recognizing that my mightiness is going to come from my state of mind, not from my physical health. If I need to be fluid restricted to stay out of heart failure, then I just need to give up the Diet Cokes. If I need oxygen to keep from feeling like an elephant is sitting on my chest, then I just need to hook myself up and take some deep breaths.

And I worked really hard to remind myself of these lessons as I marched my butt down to the DMV to get a disabled parking permit…

I have always resistant to getting one of these. There have been other times in my life that I should have applied for one but was too stubborn to do so. I had a thousand excuses as to why…I thought it was admitting some kind of defeat or people would think I was “working the system.” However, as I have gotten older (and maybe slightly wiser), I am now realizing this may be one of those necessary steps I need to take to do what’s best for my health.  I mean, I do live in Florida where the heat and humidity choke the life out of normal heart healthy folks.

And maybe getting dirty looks from people who think I “don’t look sick enough” to need a disabled parking permit is all in my head. I’m just going to tell myself that I am going to get a lot dirtier looks when I pass out in the middle of a parking lot and block traffic. I will remind myself that I am sparing a Midwestern tourist the trauma of running me over during their family vacation.

So, I am going to count the fact that I physically have that bright blue placard in my possession as a small victory and as a sign that I am getting better at the acceptance part of this whole deal.

Now, we’ll see if I actually use it….maybe only on the really humid days and when the Publix parking lot is really, really full.