Six Years Ago Today...

(The new category gives one a clue why that date is significant). August 19, 1998, the day before my son's sixth birthday, I was dying of heart failure. It was brought on by a previously undiagnosed condition of idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy which chose me for some unfathomable reason (bad luck? bad Karma? bad-thing-happening-to-a-good-person? It's truly a waste of time to ponder why. I did for about oh, five minutes maximum) as a good candidate to go to work on, and "it" almost got me.
My ejection fraction was down to 10%--kind of the cut-off point for sustainable life. A doctor to whom I will always owe my life, listened to my heart and though he was one of many who had done so over the preceding months as my condition worsened, he was the only one good enough to diagnose me properly. Within seconds, he looked me straight in the eye, and muttered a few words of reassurance as his expression told me that it wasn't good news. I needed to go to the hospital next door--now--he'd call ahead for me. I knew I was dying--I could not breathe without extreme effort and it was getting much worse.
Even so, my son was starting school the following week and if I was going to be sick or worse, I needed to finish his back-to-school shopping. So before going home to grab an overnight bag and a toothbrush, I stopped at Kohl's department store and bought him two pairs of trousers. Unbeknownst to me, my doctor was telephoning the hospital, quite frantically checking to see if I'd been admitted yet. Well, I had to get my kid pants, especially since it may have been the last time I could. After I shopped for about 90 minutes, I went home, threw a few things in my bag, and headed to the hospital and into the frenzy of being a Cardiac Intensive Care Unit patient. What a long road lay ahead of me, but I couldn't have imagined. All I could think of was, If I die now, who will raise my boy?

Comments

[PurpleCar]

Well, congrats for surviving that and keep on keeping on, Cyn!

[Cyn]

The mother thing.
I knew I was going into the hospital and didn't know if/when I was coming out. So I wanted to do one last important (in my mind only) thing for my son, who was starting first grade within days.
It's the no-one-can-take-better-care-of-him-than-me syndrome. :/

[Anne]

Wow. Whatever possessed you to go shopping??? When I was diganosed with kidney failure, I was in the OR in 10 seconds. ..ok I was already in the hospital having tests run, but STILL...