One Day At A Time

27 Friday Jan 2012

Posted by skydivingchick in Uncategorized

Two years ago today, my best friend passed away.

Chris gave me the strength and the ambition to pursue my dreams and to follow my heart. He’s the only friend I’ve ever had who truly knew me and knew my heart – it’s an irreplaceable type of friendship.
I wouldn’t be jumping out of airplanes and tackling challenges today if it hadn’t been for Chris.

This week has been crazy for me. It was the end of a relationship and friendship, it was a week of coming to grips with a diagnosis and a different heart condition and a hard decision – which I still haven’t made.

I’ve had an immense outpouring of support, which I am very grateful for. I’ve been shown that when a door closes, another one opens. I’ve shown myself that I can make it on my own no matter what – but that doesn’t make any of this any easier. It’s hard.

Life can be difficult. Any way you look at it – people die, people leave, things are inconsistent and crazy at the times when you need and crave stability.
It’s days like this where I want to cuss everyone and everything. It’s not fair to have the one person who can make things better ripped from your life with no warning. Change can be great or it can be negative. It is all in how you choose to look at it.

So for today, one day at a time, I will choose to believe and have faith. I will choose to see the positive. Everything happens for a reason. And real change never comes without hard decisions and a little heart ache. In the end, pain makes you stronger. I’d like to think that I’m a living example of that. Despite the heart condition, and the daily challenges, I still live my life to the fullest and make it a goal to accomplish everything I’ve ever dreamed of. Despite the fact that my best friend isn’t here in the flesh to help me through all of this – He’s here in every single thing that I do.
When I jump, Chris flies with me. If I cry, he’s by my side. When I tackle a new challenge, I know he’s standing proud beside me.

I’m not a perfect person. But what is perfect, anyway? Everyone has their flaws. Maybe imperfection is what makes us all perfect in our own way.
So I choose to try to live my life the best I can. I choose to take leaps and do things that people may think I’m crazy for doing. After all, life is just one moment of chaos followed by another. And just existing isn’t really living.

Take something you’ve always wanted to do and just do it. Live every single day like it is your last. Take risks and make those hard decisions that you’re scared to make.

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear”

For every person who has something negative to say, there’s another person in your life that loves and supports you – someone who will believe in you no matter what.

You never know what life will throw at you, but I’m here and still surviving and I’m strapped in and ready for the ride.
And I’ll continue to live and love every single minute of it.

Cleared For Takeoff! :-)

24 Tuesday Jan 2012

Posted by skydivingchick in Heart Disease

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

arrhythmia, Sinus Tachycardia, SVT

Today is my last day on the CardioNet monitor, and I just had my follow up appointment with my doctor to go over the results of the monitoring.
I finally have a concrete diagnosis and an answer to what is causing my symptoms.
The valvular heart disease is not a factor when it comes to my symptoms. It is there, it exists – but it’s not causing the symptoms or putting me at any sort of risk as this time. I’m still shocked by this. With how bad my symptoms have gotten, I was waiting for the doctor to tell me that the valve needed to come out!

What I have is a problem with super-ventricular tachycardia, or SVT. I have been diagnosed with having “inappropriate sinus tachycardia”

The great news is my heart valve is staying put for the time being. It’s leaky, but it’s stable!

The best news – there’s absolutely no problem with me skydiving, I just have to keep an eye on symptoms. 🙂 This girl is cleared for takeoff!! 🙂

Now the bad news. There are three options for someone with my condition.

Option #1) do nothing. Live with the symptoms and try to tolerate it. Well that sounds like a bad option – I get short of breath just doing laundry, I wake up at night not being able to breathe, and I miss running!

Option #2) High doses of blood pressure meds to slow the heart rate and help eliminate the tachycardia, therefore lessening severity of symptoms. Problem with this option – my blood pressure is on the low-normal end. High doses of blood pressure meds would cause other symptoms for me – such as extreme fatigue, dizziness, and the possibility of fainting. I’m not to keen on the idea of taking medication that puts me at risk of hitting the floor every time I stand up too fast. I’m also not keen on taking medication that’s going to out me at risk of blacking out and fainting, considering that I skydive in my free time. Fainting in free fall would be bad.

Option #3) Catheter Ablation surgery. Now this perked my interest – minimally invasive surgery that can eliminate my issue altogether? Tell me more! And here’s where the bad news comes in. The surgery consists of a three hour long procedure where they basically locate the cells in your heart, within the sinus node, that are misfiring and causing inappropriate tachycardia – and they kill those cells so that they no longer function. However, the surgery only has a 50% success rate. Meaning 50 % of patients wake up and are symptom free, while the other 50% see no results. And worse, you run a 30% risk of having too many cells killed and the sinus node damaged, and then you wake up with a pacemaker.
I’m only 27 years old – i don’t want to have to deal with a pacemaker!!

So I’ve got a lot of research to do and a decision to make.

I’m sick of being sick. I just want to feel healthy and normal. It’s frustrating not having an easy solution to the problem.
That’s life though. And although it’s exhausting and sometimes discouraging feeling sick, being short of breath, and not being able to always keep up with everyone else – living with this has made me stronger and made me who I am. It has driven me to live life passionately, it has given me courage and hopefully my story has helped inspire others.

So although it’d be nice to be “normal”, I wouldn’t change a minute of my life as it is – heart condition and all. 🙂

Hypoxia at 5,000 feet, and other nonsense

15 Sunday Jan 2012

Posted by skydivingchick in Skydiving

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Skydiving in Florida was out of this world AMAZING. I never thought I would jump out of an airplane from 14,000 feet at night – let alone at midnight on new years eve – but I sure did. Exhilarating. Terrifying. Beyond words amazing.
Did I feel invincible after the third night jump and landing my canopy at about 12:20am on January 1st of 2012? Absolutely.
So winter jumps back in St. Louis should be a breeze right? I mean, if you can plunge towards the earth from 14,000 feet in pitch blackness, what’s a freezing cold hop n pop?
Yeah not so much.
This girl forgot about the heart condition, threw caution to the wind, and got hypoxic on the 4th jump of the day at 5,000 feet.
I realized something was wrong when I went to do my routine handle check on jump run. Slightly light headed but not alarmingly so, I started my checks. Backwards. Reserve handle? Check! Main cutaway? Check. Throw out… Where’s my right hand? I can’t feel it all of a sudden!
That’s when I realized my hand had locked up. It was like my joints froze solid when I bent my fingers. Everything was all tingly. So I pried my fingers apart, shot an alarming glance at my jump master, and wiggled my fingers on my left hand- and got the same result. Total finger and wrist lock down.
At this moment I hear ” DOOR!” – usually the best sound on the planet… And I respond with, “get out and go – I’m riding the plane down” trying to convey the problem by waving my hands and attempting to wiggle my fingers, with tears in my eyes and my head swimming – looking like I’m having a panic attack.
Did I know it was hypoxia? No way! I thought I was stroking out the entire plane ride down, as the dizziness increased and every joint that I moved locked up on me.
I had enough sense to ask the pilot to radio down to manifest that a jumper was riding the plane down so those on the ground looking for three canopies didn’t freak out at the sight of only two; and I exited the plane on the ground with tears on my cheeks and my head down. Ego in check. Big time. And disappointed to boot. I was really looking forward to that 4th jump of the day, and perfecting that wonderful diving double flip exit that I almost had down to an art 😉

Yes it was only 5,000 feet.
But I learned hypoxia can most definitely kick in at 5,000 feet – when you havent eaten or drank any water all day, when you’ve been smoking, when it’s 15 degrees at altitude, oh and when your heart valve is leaking. Lesson learned – eat, drink water, stay warm, do not smoke, and check the pulse ox in between jumps. I can still be bionic woman, I just have to be a little more careful than the average jumper and keep myself in check in situations where it normally wouldn’t be a concern.
Yes, I plan on jumping again this month. In the cold. Keeping an eye out for signs of hypoxia.
And if I can’t jump, I can’t jump. Although I’d rather take the quick way down at 120mph, I’ve tackled one more fear this season – I’m a little less afraid to ride down with the plane 😉 that has to count for something. Maybe I should look into flying lessons in the future!

Oh, and I’ve now got 85 jumps to date. 🙂