I never knew what it was like to experience heart failure.
I've experienced a broken heart-- your chest clinches, you become light headed, vision swirls, breathing becomes difficult and in my case was accompanied by a 3 day fever of 104, multiple tests, an ER visit, and a spinal tap. The doctors attributed my sudden illness to a virus. But my chest has never quite felt the same after that.
My daughter sleeps.
All. Day. Long.
She sleeps.
She doesn't wake for feeds or diapers. She snores, cuddly on the couch. I hold her. I sing to her.
She sleeps.
Midnight arrives and she wakes. Her breathing through her nose sounds obstructed, yet, after multiple nose bulb runs produces nothing. We lay her down and a few moments later she gasps for air, her chest sucking inward. Her body shudders and then she begins to cry.
She cries, until exhausted she sleeps. But her sleeping is not the pleasant sleep of the daytime. The daytime when you cuddle her and rock her and she dozes on silently.
I never knew that heart failure patients suffer from insomnia, but it's actually quite common.
So at night, I watch her. Her shutters, her gasps for air, her cries. She's been prescribed morphine for the pain, pain I know she is feeling. But even with the morphine, she cries at night.
As parents we would do anything for our child. If our child were standing on train tracks and a train began approaching, we would yell, shout, even risk our own lives to move them out of the way.
My daughter is on a train track. The train is approaching. Nearer. Closer. There's nothing I can do, but watch.
Her nighttime sleep is restless. She tries tossing her head, but is too weak. She sleeps then wakes suddenly gasping for breath, unable to fill her lungs, they sound obstructed again. Her eyes roll backwards, she shutters, she screams.
She is in active heart failure.
Do we have another day? A week? A year? Only a second more?
Cherish every moment, good and bad. Hold your loved ones close.
