Day 365 with the New Heart!

It’s Day 365 with the new heart and I’m thinking about that long car and boat ride we took to UWMC 366 days ago.

After receiving The Call and spending several hours frantically rushing around, re-doing all of the things I had already done to prepare myself and my household for my long hospitaI stay, we finally drove down our driveway. I was both giddy and frightened, joyous and terrified. We were the first car on the boat and had a gorgeous view of the Seattle skyline on a brilliantly sunny and hot July day. We both got out of the car and walked closer to the front of the boat and took a few photos. The water was so blue, the sky was so blue, the wind and the sun were so warm on my skin.

Once we drove off the boat, through downtown and onto I-5 North (heading towards the hospital) I remember looking out of the sunroof at the sky, looking out at the trees along the freeway, appreciating their strength, patience and intense greenness. I remember wondering if this was the last daylight I’d ever see, and I remember opening my eyes WIDE and trying to see it ALL, as if I could ward off the darkness of death with all of the light I was carrying within me.

I remember looking over at Derek in the driver’s seat. My rock. I knew he was feeling the same things I was feeling, but he looked so calm. I remember loving him intensely in that moment and feeling so guilty for putting him through what we’d been through in the previous 9 months and what we were surely going to be facing for the foreseeable future. If there was a future.

And after a frantic and still quiet night in the ICU, in the morning, my anesthesiologist wheeled me down the hallway with Derek in hot pursuit. He snapped a final photo of me in the elevator and when the doors closed, I could finally stop pretending to be brave. I felt like what an astronaut must feel when strapped in with a giant rocket beneath her seat, about to propel her into space. There was no stoicism. There were tears and near-hyperventilation. I honestly don’t know how my exhausted, damaged heart didn’t just stop beating then.

And then there was darkness.

At precisely this time (10:14 a.m.) 365 days ago, Derek sent out this message via my Facebook account:

And at 11:04 a.m. 365 days ago, he sent out this message:

And then there were complications… pretty serious ones. But my doctors and I overcame them. The light I carried with me, it beat the darkness.

Right now I’m sitting on my deck with my dog Boo. I’m drinking a latte and I’m listening to the birds chatter and call in the trees. I hear a squirrel sounding an alarm, leaves rustling in the breeze. I’m looking at the same bright blue sky and the same intensely green trees not through new eyes, but through a new heart and I am aware of how profoundly I am changed.

I’m here.

I lived.

And I’m so grateful.