2:30am Noah wakes up. I go downstairs in the cold house to his room. I nurse him. (Another post for another day...) He goes back to sleep. Alex wakes up. He wet the bed. I change him, put a towel on his bed, tuck him back in. Climb the stairs. I try, unsuccessfully, to go back to sleep.
3:45am On the verge of finally falling asleep, Noah wakes up again. I, again, trek downstairs in the cold house. Nurse him. Put him in his crib. He commences to scream hysterically. I go upstairs, thinking "Eh..maybe he'll only cry for a minute."
3:58am Noah's still screaming. I start crying. Grant wakes up. I cry to him about how hard it is to be a mom. (Remember this moment...It will be very ironic around 9:00am.) Grant consoles me. Mommy meltdown continues.
4:06am The alarm on my defibrillator goes off. The one that sounds like a European siren. The one that goes off if something is wrong with the device. The one that went off almost exactly three years ago that meant my wire was broken and I had to have surgery. Mommy meltdown turns into total heart patient freak out. Grant's consoling turns into frantic prayers for me to calm down. Especially if my defibrillator is not functioning, I can't be this upset. "God we need you to show up." I think that was his whole prayer.
4:08 Somewhat calmer. God shows up and calms me down. Grant takes the day off. I call and wake up my mom. She takes the day off.
4:30am Email the fantastic Dr. Knilans the whole situation.
4:30-6:50 Play Cut the Rope on the Ipad, read, watch tv, etc. Anything to not fall asleep. The device can give inappropriate shocks when the wire is fractured, and I did NOT want to wake up to that. Or, God forbid, not wake up.
5:00am Alarm sounds again.
6:55am Dr. Knilans calls. He tells me to do a phone transmission.
7:05am Arrive at my parents to use their landline to send the phone transmission. (I have a cool device that I place over my defibrillator, connect it to the phone line, and it sends all of the data directly to my doctor.)
7:15am Dr. Knilans calls. (Have I mentioned that I love him?!?) His first words? "It's no big deal." Whew. Apparently it WAS my wire. The device runs checks on my wires (of which there are two) every night. The lead impedence was 1016. The alarm was set to go off if the impedence went over 1000 ohms. The setting was too low. 2 or 3 weeks ago when I was in the office for a device check, it was 992. I run right around 1000 all the time. The fact that it took this long to trip the alarm is somewhat amazing. And actually, a higher number is better. There are just parameters in place because if a wire fracture DOES occur, the ohms skyrocket.
8:30am Leave our house to go to College Hill Presbyterian to set up for Strategy for Mothers (I'm the director.) I still haven't been back to sleep since 2:30am. Missi Kershner (life-saver that she is) meets me there to help me.
9:30am Start off the SFM meeting and enjoy meeting with the moms to discuss--here's the ironic part--Gratitude in Motherhood. How grateful was I feeling at 3:58am?? Oh--that's right. I wasn't feeling grateful at all. I wanted my sleep. I wanted my children to sleep. Ah--how the Lord loves to teach us. More about that later.
10:15am Leave SFM meeting early to go to Childrens Hospital for my "tune up." The fantastic nurse comes out approximately a minute and half after my unscheduled arrival (Dr. Knilans told me to come whenever I wanted to) and changes my parameters on my device. The whole thing takes about 10 minutes. She tells me that I'm the first one to have this happen to. And now, because of this, they're going to change all of the patients parameters instead of leaving them on the factory settings. Just one of MANY things that have changed as a result of me in the land of defibrillators. More on that later.
11:00am Arrive home. Have lunch and snuggle my boys.
11:45-3:30pm Sleep. Glorious sleep. In my bed. Alone. Quiet. Ah. Have I mentioned I LOVE my husband? He morphs from Super-husband and Super-Dad into Totally-Awesome-I'm-Going-To-Completely-Take-Care-Of-My-Wife-And-Kids-Mode at the drop of a hat. Or at the sounding of a siren alarm from your wife's implanted heart device at 4am in your dark bedroom. You know. Either one.
3:30pm Wake up and get dressed for work.
4:45-9:30pm Teach 7 dance classes. (2 ballet, 2 jazz, 2 lyrical and 1 tap)
10:00pm Arrive home. Check on my sleeping kids. Kiss them. Reflect on how grateful I am to be their mom and to be home with them and NOT in some hospital getting a new wire. Love on my husband. Tell him I love him and appreciate him.
10:30pm Get in bed.
2:30am Noah wakes up with a high fever....here we go again! :)
So there you have it. A 24 hour snapshot into my life. As a mom, defibrillator patient, director of SFM, wife, dance teacher, child of God. So what did this fantastic day teach me?? Well, lets see.
Number 1--God often uses our times of being the most broken to show us our need for Him. I was in a not-so-pleasant moment of motherhood. Approximately 5 hours before I had to show up and lead 27 other women in the topic of Gratitude in Motherhood. Irony? God keeping me humble? God showing me that I don't have to have it all together? God showing me that motherhood is HARD. We moms have to stick together. That's why Strategy for Mothers is important. That's why God has given me a heart to serve other moms. Motherhood can break us. And God can use those pieces to shape us into the mothers and followers of Him that HE would like us to be.
Number 2--God shows up when we need him to. My heart rate was off the charts, I was hyperventilating. But He showed up and calmed me down. I immediately was able to breathe and think somewhat rationally. I immediately was able to come up with a plan of action. Also--a quick side note. God does not cause illness or injury. God did not cause me to have to have a defibrillator. He did not cause my heart disease. He did not cause my alarm to go off. Satan gives illness and injury. God was hurting WITH me. God showed up to hold me in that moment. It is not of Him. He is holy and pure. But He WILL use the illness and injury to make sure that his glory is revealed. Which is why I share this whole thing with you all.
Number 3--I don't know how people live without God and a church family. Within about 15 or 20 minutes of this happening I had emails sent out to our small group and other people that we know to have them pray. It brought me a lot of comfort. I had people willing to take over the SFM meeting, bring us dinner, watch the boys, take off work, pray, etc. That is just invaluable to me.
Number 4: I do love to be a mom. It's hard. It's sometimes thankless. But, faced with the possibility of having to spend time away from my boys (in the hospital), I realized the magnitude of my love. I can't imagine not being with them. I love them. I need their snuggles and giggles to get me through the day. My mommy-meltdown was quickly overshadowed by an intense desire to have the privledge of continuing to mother them.
Number 5--While I can sometimes look normal, act normal, and even think that I'm normal, I'm just one short siren alarm away from life turning upside down. As, in reality, we all are. I should have cherished that 2:30 and 3:45am nursing session with Noah. What if it had been my last? I often wish for him to sleep through the night, but really, what's bad about spending a few precious moments snuggling with a sleepy boy in a dark room??
Number 6--It was reconfirmed to me why I have a heart disease. I was the first pediatric defibrillator patient in the whole tristate area. The doctors learned not to place the wires under the rib cage after doing that with my first implantation. (The wires snapped a year and a half later.) Because of that incident, when I was without defibrillator protection for 18 days, Medtronic started putting audible alarms on the devices for different things. Like a wire snapping. The pacemaker clinic at Childrens started putting all the device alarm settings on Standard time (instead of daylight savings time) after I thought I heard my alarm one time and we couldn't figure out which time it was set for. And now, the pacemaker clinic is going to start changing the lead impedence parameters on all devices because of this last incident.
Here's the thing. NONE of those things were pleasant. In fact, some of them were awful. But, I had God holding me through it all. I had my family. My family had their church family. I would rather be the "guinea pig" and have the doctors learn and discover things through me than through someone else who doesn't have such a support system. Someone who doesn't know God. Someone who would doubt God's goodness because of some of those trials. All of those things have caused me to lean more heavily on God. Have caused me to trust MORE in God's goodness.
So, bring it on. To quote my fabulous CincinnatiMommies.com group: "You can't scare me. I'm a mommy." And to add to that...I'm also a child of God.
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