» Sunday, 18 September A.D. 2011
my summer vacation
I always disliked the inevitable “My Summer Vacation” assignment in grade school. Not that I had not enjoyed my summer, mind you, but I was never the kid who went hunting for lions on the Serengeti or the kid who defended a small Brazilian village from ant hordes with a hoe and a glass of water. My summer vacations always sounded rather boring in comparison, even when compared against my classmates who had done virtually the same things: a family vacation, maybe some swimming or tennis lessons. Maybe I do not have a flair for the dramatic in my writing.
My big news this summer was starting a new job; I left my position at CodeSourcery for a quite different position at Mozilla, working on things related to Firefox performance. I flew to California for a week of orientation, raided the bike room for company shirts, came back on my first red-eye ever, and headed to Gamefest 2011 to spend a great time with old college friends. (And we are getting old.) The summer was off to a good start.
A week later, one of the aforementioned company shirts had been sliced open after I went into cardiac arrest, Tricia's mom called 911, and Tricia and her dad performed chest compressions until the paramedics came to intubate me and shock my heart.
Even now, it sounds surreal to write those words; I have no memory of the actual cardiac arrest or the time spent in the ICU in a medically-induced coma. (A bit bummed that I have no “I saw the light” stories.) As near as the doctors could figure out, I suffered from streptococcal myocarditis, an infection of the heart by the bacteria that causes strep throat (which I had and was taking antibiotics for). The doctors said this sort of disease is not supposed to happen in the states; it's common in the developing world, but antibiotics tend to prevent complications like mine from ever showing up. (We called the on call cardiologist one night later on and he said he had never heard of such a disease.) I did not have a heart attack; there was no blockage in my arteries, my heart merely stopped pumping properly and sat there quivering instead.
As you can imagine, this turned life quite upside down; my father-in-law recalls Tricia saying, “Stay with me, Nathan!” as they both gave me CPR before the paramedics arrived. Things were a bit touch-and-go in the ICU; Tricia posted a lot of updates on Facebook and got many, many well-wishes and prayers through doing so. Neither of us knows the full extent of the network of people we had praying for us; I'm sure the circle was much bigger than both of us imagined. Fortunately, I did come out of my medically-induced coma with no brain damage, spent a few days in the hospital (a boring hospital room was quickly enlivened with numerous drawings from my daughters), had a pacemaker put in, and came home rather weak, but expecting a full recovery.
And thanks be to God, recovered I have! I went through seven weeks or so of cardiac rehab at the hospital: walking/running/biking/weights three times a week (with which, I must say, we've been grateful for the extensive help from folks giving me rides and whatnot to help Tricia out). I'm happy to say that I showed steady progress through those sessions and have come out of them feeling in about the shape I was prior to hospitalization. As far as we can tell, I've had virtually no memory loss or other mental issues, which is great. I went back to work at the beginning of August (I needed a doctor's note to resume sitting in a chair and staring at a computer screen all day, which I found funny) and I've resumed running. I generally feel like nothing happened, except that I'm not supposed to drive until Christmas and I have a small metal saucer embedded in my chest.
Well, almost nothing. Me being my unemotional self, it was hard for me to even think of anything really bad happening. Sure, I went to the hospital unconscious in an ambulance, was in a coma for a couple days, but I could see myself improving in the hospital, could watch myself getting stronger in rehab, and so forth. Of course I was going to come through! Sure, we had to deal with a strep relapse about a month after, and I seemed in rough shape then (they took my blood pressure as something like 80 over 55 at the clinic), but I took drugs and they worked that time! What, me, worry?
Until about three weeks ago when Tricia's parents came to visit for the weekend; they had thankfully been here the weekend of my cardiac arrest and were extremely helpful in getting me to the hospital and probably for keeping Tricia sane as well. We went to Taste Cafe for breakfast, as we had done that previous weekend, and as we were going home (or maybe shortly after we arrived home), Tricia's dad said to me totally in jest, “Don't take another three hour nap now!” (Fatigue is one sign of heart problems.).
I freaked out. I still can't really explain what was going on, just this vague sense of dread that something bad was going to happen and I couldn't do anything about it. That Bad Things Happening was just going to be The Way Things Were when Mom and Dad visited. Or when we went to Taste for breakfast, or whatever. Wisely, Tricia told me go off and introvertly recharge for the afternoon, and after that and talking to Mom and Dad about that weekend, I came out of things feeling much better. And then my Mom and Dad came the weekend after that (they flew out the day I was hospitalized) and I was able to talk with them too, which helped some more.
And then there was this past week, when I went to California for my first Mozilla All-Hands. Sure, flying across the country is routine, but the circumstances surrounding the last flight certainly gave us cause to worry. (And I flew out on 9/11, which was just great from a superstitious standpoint.) I took strep-battling drugs with me just in case, and was anxious the first day or two out there, but gradually relaxed and treated things as Just Another Business Trip. And I wound up having a great time in California.
In any event, the stress/anxiety of the past couple of weeks have certainly given me a new appreciation for what exactly went on three months ago (tomorrow will be three months since I went to the hospital). We also now know that I don't always get sick when parents come to visit, I don't always go into cardiac arrest when I get strep, and shortly we'll be reassured that I can fly to California and not get sick the week after. All in all, we're doing pretty well; God has blessed us in our crisis.
Thanks for all of the well-wishes and prayers posted on Facebook and otherwise; thanks for all of the meals, lawn mowings, and offers of random help over the past couple months. We've both been astonished, grateful, and humbled at the outpouring of love and support we've been shown during this time.
posted by Nate @ 9:44PM