Apple juice and the other things I’m learning to love.

I know right? Apple juice, everyone LOVES apple juice.  Not me, I hated it until it was my salvation for four days.  These four days would change the trajectory of my life as I knew it.  I can’t explain why I did it, or what thoughts even made me come to the decision to walk into the ER that day. I didn’t have a choice, my mind was winning and it was the type of winning that would ultimately make me lose everything.  

Walking into the ER I could already feel the effects of the medicine rushing through my blood and finding its way to my brain.  It was a high that I had never felt before, it was a rush that I never want to feel again; but I was desperate. The registar asked me “what are you here for”…my answer “I overdosed on over the counter medicine.” Later after the charcoal had taken effect and my body had neutralized itself I found myself in scrubs and was staring at a “babysittler”; I had been put under involuntary baker act.  But you see, that was my goal all along. My intention wasn’t to kill myself, it was to stop the dreams, the night sweats and the uncontrollable thoughts that I didn’t matter and I wasn’t good enough for myself and for this life.

Many people have asked me in my journey with mental health why I did what I did, I was given a second, third, fourth chance at life when the odds were against me at such a young age.  That’s the problem, that terror of something being wrong, never quite being whole, always having to look before you leap has somehow told my brain “what’s the point?” I can never thank the doctors that have cared for me since I was a baby for standing up and always cheering me on; but what was the point at the age of 30?  That’s how I felt, useless and a burden.

All of this lead me where I am today; staring at five packed boxes and a room full of memories that still need to be packed.  I’m moving back home; for now. I can never thank my friends for what they have done for me here and I have no harsh words in the worry they have for me.  My friends don’t deserve to who I am right now, my godson doesn’t need to worry about where ‘cole is, and my family shouldn’t have to know I disappeared from a toll-free number after i have found my way to a phone in scrubs that have no strings.  My friends and family deserve the me that loves pizza and anime, the me that is always willing to try something once, the me that loves traveling more than anything else and the me that enjoys this life I have.

I hope that I can someday be that person again, the one who can manage this life without being a burden, the one who can help others who are in this position.  No one should have to choose between their physical health and their mental health like I’ve had to. Here’s to learning to love myself with a big glass of apple juice.  

The glass walls and civil war of depression, anxiety and CHD

I wrote this when I wasn’t so happy and I just wanted to write it all out.

I watch everyone walk by me, and everyone live around me yet I can’t join in.  There are walls around me, but they don’t prevent me from seeing what’s in front of me, they don’t skew my view on the life I have and what I want; they make it impossible.  I tend to get really into living life ‘well’, and running towards my dreams; whatever they may be that week.  This life I live is clean, there are no smear marks, no fingerprints to let me know that there is a wall ahead of me, until I hit the wall at full force and stumble backwards onto the floor.  “Why can’t I keep going?” Then I see it, a glass box; and I’m stuck in it.  I thought I had left this room behind, I thought that if I lived my life well enough that I would be free from the walls that I continuously work to keep down.

The thing is I work hard to keep down the walls that I can hide behind, the walls that make it “ok” if I forget to eat or if I don’t get out of bed, the walls that make me invisible.  I’ve managed to break down those walls, I’ve managed to manage my life until I hit a glass wall.  Just last week I found myself in one when my doctor told me I might have to have surgery…my life just stopped.  How can you make plans for a future you know nothing about? I saw others around me plan for college, plan for their new career, plan for their family.  The glass room I was inside would only let me plan for a few weeks ahead, not a few months, let alone a few years…where would I be then?

This time the glass room was shattered by reassurance and information that I will be ok, that I will be able to forgo the surgery.  Other times however the glass wall isn’t something that is shattered so easily.  Sometimes glass rooms pop up instead of brick ones; I know that what I’m thinking isn’t normal and I can see where I want to be, and people can see me but I can’t move from where I am.  These glass rooms are scary, because I’m not sure what triggered me, and the bounce back of the gravity is just a little too much for me to handle.  Sometimes the glass room is comfortable because I can just sit and watch life go by. People will stop and ask me “what’s wrong?” or they will even me if they can help me out; but I tell them “I’m ok”.  Instead of building a wall as a defense mechanism against the outside world, I make glass ones that are used as defense mechanisms against myself; my own civil war.

Danger

Sometimes the danger is in knowing.

“She’s so annoying, why doesn’t she just go away?”
“I can’t beleive she wore that! Doesn’t she know that doesn’t fit her right?”
“Did you know she said something to him, I can’t believe she had the audacity to do that!”
“Why doesn’t she just grow up?”
“It wouldn’t even matter if he was here or not.”

Can you even hear yourselves sometimes? We are ADULTS, not in middle school, not in high school; we are GROWN people.  Reading those insults you probably wouldn’t guess these are things I hear in the everyday world I live in, and no they aren’t about me. I mean I couldn’t really tell you if they were about me, because in “grown-up”land people still talk behind others backs.

It’s hard to be that person who doesn’t know how to communicate well because they live on the Autism Spectrum; yet they still want to live normal, be social, and have friends.  If someone has told you lies your whole life, don’t you owe it to that guy to tell him he’s being deceived? Maybe she was never able to learn from an adult how to “grow up” the way you did, maybe she didn’t have an adult to learn from at all.

My point in this is you really never truly know someone’s story, someone’s life, someone’s feelings about you, and even moreso how they feel about themselves.  Don’t judge people, because trust me; they are judging themselves.  They are looking at how you handle yourself in tough situations with ease.  She notices how annoying she can be, but really doesn’t know how to change.  He sometimes doesn’t know why he keeps going on when no one seems to notice if when he’s gone.

We tell the younger generations to be careful of strangers, not to chat with people they don’t know, and make sure to have your cellphone on you at all times.  What we don’t tell them is the danger of their words.  We don’t tell them how words can have a snowball effect on someone’s life, how words sometimes can (and do) hurt worse then physical punches.  “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”….. that’s not the truth.  We need to teach them to think about what they say before they say it and teach them that words do hurt.

If you have not already read or watched 13 Reasons Why I urge you to do so.  For those of you who have triggers, this is a hard one to watch.  It will remind you (as it reminded me) how our words can really affect those we speak them to.

“Words are powerful. They can create or they can destroy. Use them wisely.”

Live, Love, Laugh…..Always,

Nicole

Sometimes

I know what I feel
And what I say
get jumbled up
between my mouth
and my brain

I smile in knowing
even in my flaw
I am loved

Sometimes however
it’s not that way
everything isn’t as easy
as you think

Sometimes those words
are like punches to the gut
verbal vomit that won’t stop

Sometimes the noise
is more deafening
than the silence

Sometimes what people don’t say
will say everything for them
they won’t speak the truth
and hold back to protect themselves

Sometimes everything won’t be ok
and sometimes it’s ok
to just live in the moment
day by day

Stars in the sky

Things tend to change when you don’t want or know how to react to it.  I find solace in poetry, and I wrote this in one of those moments.

I didn’t know it was you
I didn’t know that I missed my chance
That one opportunity to really tell you how I feel

And now I feel broken
I feel scarred
My defeat is clearly written

Healing doesn’t just happen
It magically won’t get better
It just gets numb

The feelings
Being happy and being sad
Eventually they are all one emotion

The scars that show
The scars that don’t
They engrave the body and soul

I wish I could of been honest
I wish I could of told the truth
In that card I wrote to you

The stars
Pierce the sky
When day turns into night

The brightness in you
Was blinding me
So I closed my eyes

The shine you gave
It was unknown
And I was scared

Just as the stars
Shine the brightest
In the darkest of skies

So…I joined a new health club.

I’m back home from my trip to Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota where they added something a little extra than I was bargaining for.  At the ripe old age of 28 I joined the pacemaker club.  The doctors were concerned for my valves as I had mentioned earlier, but it seemed that everything was a go and the ablation was scheduled for the following Tuesday.  During the ablation they  noticed that half of my conduction system was not working as well as it should and told me that I would eventually need a pacemaker.  I was told that this could happen months or years from now but it would happen.  I made the decision to get it done while I was at the best hospital in the world with doctors who specialized in…me.  The recovery hospital wise was only one extra day, but for the next month I’m not allowed to lift more than 5lbs with my left arm or lift it above my shoulder.  You may be thinking that doesn’t seem that hard….have you tried putting your hair in a ponytail without being about to use one arm at all? It’s also really fun trying to put pants on and not being able to use both your arms to reach behind you and shimmy your way into actual pants (sweatpants FTW!). I’ve been adjusting but I have also been in a lot of pain.  Right now it’s easy to remind myself not to lift my arm up, and not to lift more than 5lbs but I’m worried about when it begins to heal and I feel “good enough” to lift that extra weight or put my hair up in a ponytail all by myself. The discharge instructions also include no driving for at LEAST 10 days after the procedure (shofer please!).  I’m going to hold out as long as possible afterwards to give my heart more time to heal.

I am very grateful that we (the team of doctors and I) decided to put a stop sign at the intersection before there was a major crash.  It’s weird to me that there is a foreign object in my body that can actually be felt (and possibly after swelling goes down, seen).  Right now it’s a little hard to have my mind completely together because I’ve been taking half of an oxy during the day and one at night; I’m not sure I’ve been able to think straight for a week now.  I fight the urge to take more because I don’t want to become addicted to the calming and relaxing feeling it gives my physical state but also my mental state.  This experience has truly taught me how easy it could be for someone to get hooked on pills.

This experience at Mayo as a whole has taught me that even though I HATE being called brave by others, it does take quite a lot of bravery to hand your life over to a doctor you just met to fix you.  By the grace of God and the amazing doctors at Mayo along with the entire staff I’m happy to say I’m on the road to recover.  Though it be a long road, the gas tank is full!

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” -Unknown

Live, Laugh, Love…..Always,

Nicole

PS: I took this picture from our hotel across the street from the Mayo Clinic. 

 

Don’t go breaking my heart

A week from today I’ll be leaving on a jet plane headed to  Rochester Minnesota; more specifically the world renowned Mayo Clinic.  I had mentioned this before in my So it begins….again post so the reality of it actually happening hasn’t been too hard to process.  The sobering part of this whole trip is the idea that this is my last chance at a better quality of life.  

The whole idea of this trip isn’t life or death, but for those who have CHD or any type of chronic/invisible illness knows that “quality of life” sometimes surpasses just living with it.

Understandably this procedure won’t make everything better, it will (hopefully) let me live a little more. The biggest issue is all the medicine they have me on to keep my heart from going crazy is what’s actually making me so tired. I’m on two beta blockers and two anti flutter medicines. The point of this whole process is to be able to “permanently” take me off some of the medicines. 

My anxiety is built up around the trip itself; I have to wean myself off of my medicine before the trip.  This means that all of the medicine that is helping my heart stay where it is and at the correct bpm (beats per minute) will be free to do what it wants. The idea behind this is that through the testing they will be doing prior to the procedure Mayo will be able to see exactly what’s going on with my heart and it’s electrical system without interference from the medication.  One thing I can say is that I LOVE flying, but that was slightly altered for a little while after I experience atrial flutter on my way home from Washington DC a few years back.  Let me tell you..it is NOT the same as having atrial flutter on the ground; I couldn’t breath as easily and my chest hurt from being in the environment we were in. I’ve flown since then and have never had a problem, but because I start weaning my medicine before I leave I have a lot of anxiety around the idea of it happening again.  It’s just something that is going to be in the back of my mind as I put my headphones on and enjoy some Deadpool on my iPad.

Random paragraph: I really have NO IDEA what to pack for this trip. I live in Florida and for the past week it’s been in the low 80s. It was definitely a learning experience going there a few years ago; and I was freezing cold because I didn’t bring enough layers. On the plus side spring bathing suits and tank tops are beginning to show up in stores so all the winter stuff is really cheap! Also, I’ve never been on a planned hospital trip outside of the state of Florida, I feel like I’m packing for two different trips.  If anyone has any suggestions on what to pack please feel free to let me know -> freezing Floridian.

Since my post a few weeks ago I’ve stopped that heart healthy training for a few reasons: 1. It was full of people who didn’t really understand my situation because they all had some type of coronary artery disease 2. It was quite a drive and time commitment; and since I wasn’t doing it to reverse my heart disease I didn’t have the drive to go. 3. With the Clinic visit in a week I had to take preparations in regards to my medication and my anticoagulation INR number.  This would make it next to impossible to go to the program and or participate for at least two weeks of the nine week program.  I do realize that all of these reasons are called excuses, but they are mine and I have made the decision.  I don’t regret it; I realized that is somewhere I could really end up if I didn’t up my game.  My game however is running a little flat.  Noticeably if I got up and did stuff I didn’t feel as tired during that time; so I started going to the gym 4-5 times a week for the past few weeks.  It’s challenging and I can’t push myself as much as I would like but I’m feeling better and I get really excited about working out.

This trip will be a whole new adventure for me; new experiences and new memories to have.  I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous or scared…this procedure doesn’t come without some risk.  I just know that I want to feel more alive, I want to be present in my own life, and above all I want to be able to enjoy this life I have been giving to the best of my abilities.

“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”  Martin Luther King Jr.

Live, Laugh, Love…..Always,

Nicole

I took this picture picture of Downtown Rochester from the Mayo Clinic in Feb 2015