There and Back Again. AGAIN Again.

Adventures in Hospitalization

Sunday evening I had a very good workout. Two hours later I was in the ER, having been cardioverted into a normal sinus rhythm after lapsing into SVT between 200-236bmp. I was discharged home yesterday afternoon. This is the second time since December 6th that I have had an episode of SVT. I have broken through a lowered does of a beta-blocker, and failed an EP study and ablation. I am of course, stable now. There is a path forward, including a follow-up EP study and ablation in the coming months. The hope is that under modified conditions this second ablation will be successful where the first one failed. Medicine is not my field; I have little if anything more to say about this.

I don’t have much of anything grand to say. This has been—and will be— the latest in a conga line of cardiac conditions which have stalked me since I was fifteen years old. Don’t ask me what it all means; I can’t tell you. I haven’t anything pious to say, accept I am grateful to have received the Anointing of the Sick and Communion while in the hospital, and grateful for the many prayers offered on my behalf. Too, I am grateful for those who went out of their way to see to it I had someone to communicate with one way or another, and those who took the time to check in on me even in the midst of extraordinarily full schedules.

Do I hope the new plan works? Certainly. The physicians are excellent. Do I expect it to work? No. That would be too easy, and little if anything in my cardiac history is there to convince me my body is amenable to direct solutions. It is defective, and seems to delight in its defectiveness. But I am more stubborn, and will outlast it.

I do not despair. I have been expressly forbidden from doing so by a number of friends, including a Marine combat vet, whom I have no intention of disappointing. More importantly, were she alive my mother would not wear it and that is perhaps the most powerful motivation I can call to mind. However, I am worn out, tired, and drained. What I have described as a long Good Friday continues and I do not trust the finish line which looms indistinctly in the months ahead. In the meantime, I take grate solace in the care of my family, the concern of my friends, and the impending liturgies of Holy Week. Too, there is a great deal of Spring time gardening and scholastic work for which I am still fit, and even though my mind will be clouded by the increased dosage of the beta-blocker, I can still read and write. The truth is I am very far from dead and giving up after coming so far is repulsive.

There is a kind of thriving which arises from long endurance. Normally we associate this with athletes, who’s dedication and excellence make a ready show of this principle. In its way, this is a spiritual or mental state as much as a physical state; this should come as no surprise to anyone who holds hylomorphism to be correct. There is a kind of strength to being gracious and considerate in the midst of trials, and a kind of love.

That strength, that love, is ultimately the antidote to despair. Despair is a kind of solipsism. Not necessarily a kind of proud or arrogant solipsism as we might usually think of it, but one born from the isolation that stems from pain, from the inability to act, from long term and repeated trauma. So many things can distort our perception of reality, especially of ourselves. It is would be very easy to see myself as defective as my heart or legs. Indeed, I do have my faults and they are many.

But they are not my sum. And this is, if anything, the lesson which has been repeated by my recent hospitalization. I have seen, felt, my kindness and consideration of other people returned to me one-hundred fold and more. There is no sign of it stopping, which I do wonder at.

The simple truth is, whenever I do cross that amorphous finish line up ahead, I shan’t do it alone. This is more than comforting; it’s bolstering. So too is the myriad of choices and chances that brings this about—all the wills and tempers that had to interact *just so* to bring this state of affairs to pass, the interplay of Divine Providence and human action.

It leaves one humble.