Hospital for the Holidays

As we embark on the holidays, I start to think about everyone who is in the hospital for cardiovascular disease. Not only cardiovascular disease, but other diseases as well.

When I was in the cardiac ICU, the physical therapy team would come to walk with me in the hallways. As I peered into the many rooms on the floor, I couldn’t see any signs of visitors. How could it be the holidays and people were alone in their rooms? Where were their families, and did they have families? I didn’t know, but I do know that people have different work schedules and they can’t have visitors 24/7.

My cardiomyopathy diagnosis came as a shock

The hardest place to be is a hospital for the holidays. Christmas and New Year’s of 2018, I spent 2 months in the hospital. I had not been feeling well for a couple of months and hadn’t been able to keep food down for weeks. Lying down at night to sleep was near impossible, and I started to fear that my heart condition was getting worse. I had been diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy just 4 years earlier, and it came as a shock to me and my family. We weren’t prepared for what happened next.

My second stroke

I started a new job as an executive assistant to a General at the Pentagon. On the second day, I started to feel very sick, so I had to go to the urgent care center at my doctor's office. While in the bathroom, I passed out and had a stroke.

I was transported to the emergency room, where the doctors had to perform a thrombectomy to save my life. After the surgeon removed the clot, the doctors had to see how my body responded to its removal. This being my second stroke, the doctors had their doubts.

When I woke up, my right side was so weak, and I couldn’t talk or walk. For a week I was in rehab to learn how to be independent again.

A cardiac catheterization revealed advanced heart failure

The doctors sent me home, and within a week I was back in the hospital. This is the part where my story turns into more of a nightmare.

The doctors thought it was a gastrointestinal illness because I couldn’t eat anything without it coming back up. On the morning after Christmas, a cardiologist came in and wanted to do a cardiac catheterization on me to see if it was a heart problem.

It was the biggest shock to find out that I was in advanced heart failure. I was transported to the cardiac ICU, and for the next 2 months, the hospital became my home.

I felt so much guilt

There isn’t anything worse than not being home with your family and having them have to come to the hospital to see you. I felt so much guilt because everyone had to sacrifice their time running back and forth to the hospital. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s how I was thinking back then.

I had the biggest support system, and I had people in my room with me 24/7. My dad would even spend the night in my hospital room every night so I wasn’t lacking in any support.

Being a hospital patient on Christmas

I remember waking up on Christmas morning in the hospital and just thinking, "Why me?" I should’ve been asking why any of us are patients in the hospital on Christmas. When you begin to think of all the children in hospitals on Christmas, it begins to change your perspective.

This was before I was diagnosed with advanced heart failure, and I wasn’t understanding why the doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. I spent about a week and a half sitting there while the doctors ran numerous tests before getting diagnosed. I spent another week and a half on milrinone, which is a medication that increases the efficiency of your heart muscle and expands your blood vessels.¹

The doctors got together and realized that my heart wasn’t getting any better and I would need to get a heart transplant or a left ventricular assist device (LVAD).

A difficult hospital recovery

After the LVAD surgery, I couldn’t swallow because I was already struggling from the stroke I suffered just a few weeks prior. I was still learning how to swallow again, so this just pushed me further away from recovery because I had a tube in my nose. This is how I was given my medications as well as nutrients, and this was very challenging. I didn’t have solid food or drink for 2 weeks, and still to this day I don’t know how I made it through.

I'm still here

Long hospital stays test our patience, strength, and pretty much everything else. It can take an emotional toll on you to be away from your home, family, pets, your daily routine, and your own space. It tests you mentally because every day is a battle between your body and your mind, trying to get better so that you can be discharged. It was easily the hardest thing that I’ve ever had to overcome, but I’m still here, and that's more than a lot of people can say.

Have you ever been in the hospital for the holidays and what did you do to get through it?