I am 47. My dad only lived to be 47. In three months, I will have outlived him.
June 26, 1986. It was a Thursday. I am 20 years old, home
for the summer after my sophomore year of college. I have a full time job and a
wonderful boyfriend. The phone rings early that morning as I am in the kitchen
getting coffee. It’s my cousin in Indiana. “Hey, this is D. Your dad
died.” A statement, just that simple, can change your life like no other.
I ran out on the deck to catch my breath. I haven’t been
able to catch my breath since. There are many reasons why.
Sometimes when he traveled the midwest on business
he stopped at my aunt and uncles house in Indiana to stay the night. This was
one of those nights.
He died? How is that possible? I just talked to him last
night. My mom and 17-year-old sister were out when he called. I
chatted with him briefly and said I would see him when he got home the
following week. I don’t even remember if I told my mom he had called.
We lived in much of a fog after this. Just three scared girls trying to figure out what we were going to do without him. We had our ups and downs.
We had a funeral. I remember struggling with what to wear.
Does it really matter? I can wear clothes and breath air. Dad can’t.
Hundreds of people came from across the country. My dad was
somebody that everybody liked. Funny, smart, hard working and kind. He had a
lot of friends. None of them could believe he was gone and so young. How are
you girls going to make it? What the hell, we had no idea.
We went to therapy. We survived. The autopsy came back
saying he died of a massive heart attack. I did
not have one friend at the time that had lost a parent. Either did my
sister.
The one thing I had not counted on when I lost my dad was
also losing my friends. I had a pretty close group of girl friends, or so I thought.
When you are 20 and you lose a parent, no one really knows just the right thing
to say. In my case, my friends said nothing at all. They stopped calling me and
stopped asking me to do stuff with them. I even found out later that one of my
good friends was telling people that I became addicted to drugs trying to cope with the death of my dad. I called him and confronted him. I remember this like
it was yesterday. He admitted he was telling lies about me and sent me dozens
of roses as an apology. I threw them into the woods.
I was so wrapped up in helping my mom and sister try to
navigate life that I barely noticed my friends weren’t calling. I had that
wonderful boyfriend anyway.
After about a year and a half of trying to make our way, my
mom decided to sell the house and move to Indiana. Back to the same place my dad died. She is
from Indiana and figured that blood is thicker than water so she wanted to move
back to where her family lived. She had grown tired of being the third wheel
with her friends. At least she had friends.
Now, don’t get me wrong, we had friends. But the people that
stuck by me and were there to help during this very difficult time were the
guys my boyfriend was hanging out with. They became my best friends too.
My sister had gone off to college. I was working full time
and going to school full time. And still dating the wonderful boyfriend. If my
mom was moving away, I guess I could get my own place. We had talked about
getting married but maybe not for a while, we were so young. But in life, when things don’t work out as
you had planned you make adjustments no matter how big they are. So in April of
1988, at the ages of 21 and 23, we got married. My mom moved that July. Life
was moving pretty fast.
It gets pretty normal and mundane for the next 20 or so
years. We bought a small house, had two babies (15 months apart), built a
bigger house, had another baby.
We took vacations, went to thousands of kids sporting events
and basically worked hard at life.
And then a little bump in the road. In May of 2009 at my
yearly routine ob-gyn visit as my doctor is listening to my heart, he asks me
if I have been having chest pains or shortness of breath. My response
was, of course, I have three teenagers, isn’t that normal? I had a heart murmur, and have had for years. But he thinks he hears something more. He walks out of the
room and when he returns he hands me a card for a cardiologist and says, I want
you to call him immediately.
I did call and was seen in a week. I had so many tests run
on me that I had to start keeping a running list with me at all times. The CT scan revealed
a 10cm x 13 cm cyst in my chest cavity that was attached to the thymus gland.
It had to come out immediately. I was scheduled for a left chest thoracotomy
the following week. Life as we knew it was changing drastically.
A thoracotomy has got to be the worst surgery a person can
endure. I was in the hospital for a week. One night, after I had been taken off
of the morphine pump, I was in such pain that it took me over an hour to move
my finger about three inches just to push the button for the nurse. I know this
because I watched the clock. He came in and asked me what my pain level was on
a scale of 1 to ten. It was a 12. The next three months were horrible, but my
family was there to support me and help me through it all. My mom came and
stayed with us for a month. Cooking, cleaning, laundry and shopping all fell to
her. She was an amazing help.
At my three-month follow up with the cardiologist he says
that I should be feeling awesome since that cyst is gone, and not pressing on
my heart and lungs. Speaking of that,
shouldn’t I be able to breath better? I just wasn’t feeling that great. He did
something not many doctors do, and sent me to another doctor. One with more
experience.
That Dr. ordered more tests. And in January of
2010, five months after the thoracotomy surgery I was told that I would need to
have open heart surgery to repair pulmonary valve stenosis.
Is this what my dad suffered from and why he died so young?
It turns out, no we do not have the same issues, but heart disease is
hereditary. I had open-heart surgery in March of 2010 at the age of 44 to
replace the pulmonary valve in my heart, which is a birth defect. I am a member
of the “zipper club”. I have a 10-inch scar running down the center of my
chest. So here it is, in almost exactly seven months I have had two of the most
major surgeries a person can have. But I am alive. I am a survivor.
My husband and I celebrated our 25th
wedding anniversary by going on a two week trip to Europe that included a seven
day western Mediterranean cruise. We went with three other couples, some of the
best friends a person could have. See! I do have friends! Friends that actually
mean something to me.
I am 47. The same age my dad lived to be. I have thought
about this every single day since my birthday. And I will think about it every
single day until I turn 48. The day I outlive my dad. That is such a strange
thing to strive for and one that not many people understand.
But here I am! Everyone has a story and here is mine!
