The Best is Yet to Come

I’ve spent the better part of a week trying to think of how to bring together a post to mark today however I have been struggling with everything at the minute, in terms of creation. In truth, I’ve been feeling a bit crap since I went to Italy. I don’t mean that I didn’t enjoy myself or wish I didn’t have to leave, quite the opposite. People have said to me that it may be a little post-holiday-blues and maybe so.

However, this began to creep up on me the day I went to the Colosseum. I woke up feeling the usual numbness of a depression day and sighed, “Of course, today”. So when we got to the Colosseum I felt a bit numb, however it wasn’t until we were sitting on a step and looking up at the Colosseum that I realised I was wrong; I wasn’t feeling depressed on the day I was going there, I was feeling depressed because I was going there. The reason crept up on me while I sat on that spot.

I’ve wanted to see the Colosseum since I was around eight, certainly for as long as I remember, and I’ve wanted to see Venice since I was in my late teens. On top of that, I have been awaiting the day I’d have my surgery since I was about twelve, and I was told that would be when I was around fourteen.

So there I was, with my surgery having been and gone sitting outside the actual, real-life Colosseum with Venice in a few days’ time.

My brain offered up something I never thought would be my reaction to being there: “Now what?”

At the time I pushed it away, reminded myself I still had the whole vacation to go and then I’d get home, do my magazine piece for my friend, and life would carry me on. But I haven’t stopped thinking about it. I’m sure it’s not hard to imagine how, when you’re waiting for something like surgery, your life can stop completely. However, for me, it was more on slow motion; I still lived, I still experienced things but it was a half-life because I was being held back. No more. No more was this wait holding me back, marking me as different, apart from the rest. Now, I could untie the shackles and move on.

In the space of a couple of years I’d had my surgery, sat in front of the Colosseum and rode a Gondola down the canals of Venice.

Yet, I’m held down by a new weight, primarily… What the hell do I do now? Which is compounded by the reminder that I’m twenty-seven and have nothing to show for it. I try to reassure myself that I was ill and though people have achieved more when they were in much more dire circumstances (this is where the breathing gets faster) all I do is remind myself that that is no longer the case. (The breathing eases a little.) But it’s been two years since and I’ve achieved nothing. (The breathing quickens again.) I’m in my LATE (wheezing begins) twenties, single, unemployed and still living with my mum (on all fours on the floor banging my fist, trying to breathe).

I know my next step is to try and get published but by the time I think about that I’ve passed out for hyperventilating.

Most of you will know that I have to go to the hospital for regular check-ups and a couple of months ago was just such a time. I had to go through to Glasgow for an MRI just a couple of days after I returned from the Netherlands. I used to hate the enclosed feeling of the MRI but now I fall asleep in them so I had a little nap this time. I had to have an exercise test also, however due to lack of appointment slots I had to return for this another day, I did and everything seemed to go well. I had yet to see my cardiologist to discuss the results but to avoid having to travel through to Glasgow for a third time in such a short period of time I was given an appointment on the few days she does a clinic in Edinburgh.

That appointment wasn’t until the tenth of October and she seemed pleased with everything she saw.

Explanation needed: because the left side of my heart had been struggling to work before the operation the right side had been overcompensating and, since the heart is a muscle, this meant that it was growing in size on the right, which can be worrying. My cardiologist said that they did not expect it to reduce in size after the operation however the important thing is that it would not get bigger.

That being said, my heart size has indeed reduced, my overall heart function is up and – the one that stunned me – my exercise tolerance is up to sixty-two percent which is an increase of a third compared to before my operation.

Dr Walker said she wanted the Royal in Edinburgh to continue to check up on me every year and that they didn’t need to see me for my MOT for three years. Which sounds great, doesn’t it? I wouldn’t be back to Glasgow until I was thirty years old. That would have sounded like getting my hopes up if I’d been told that before my operation but now they all seem very happy.

However, a few days later I realised that three years’ time will mean it’ll have been five years since my operation, which is the lower threshold for how long the valve is meant to last.

While they’ll do everything they can, the bare truth of it is: I could potentially have three years left.

This is usually where the hyperventilating comes in again.

Still, Rome wasn't built in a day...