the surgery.

“I wish God would let me be born again so I could be born with a whole heart and be a normal kid. I wouldn’t have to get this surgery and I could just play tomorrow.”

 

This is what my 7-year old daughter said to me the night before her open-heart surgery. It was, as my dad would’ve put it, a preachable moment. As instructed, we had just washed all of my bedding in hot water and dried it extra long to remove any germs so she could sleep in my bed that night. We then scrubbed her down with prescription pink foam soap, cleaned her nose out with a prescription gel, and swished a strong yucky mouthwash in her mouth. It felt like I was preparing her for the slaughter. 

Isabella asked me if she could sleep in my bed that night. I usually encourage her to sleep in her bed, but all I could think that night was whether it would be the last night I would have with her or not. The “what ifs” were screaming in my brain and the complications and survival rates the doctor had discussed with us were on a continuous loop. You hear about people having successful open-heart surgery all the time. When it is your seven-year-old child, however, it is hard to remain optimistic. 

That night we both laid in my bed looking at the moonlight coming in our window. Neither one of us got much sleep. The 5 am alarm came fast. We packed our car and drove to the hospital. Bella was silent on the drive in except to say how beautiful the city looked during the sunrise. When we arrived in the parking garage of the hospital, Bella asked if we could just sit in the car for a little longer. She told me that she was scared she might wake up during the surgery. She was scared that it would hurt. I held her tight knowing I may not be able to do that for a while. 

We went up to the cardiology floor of CHOP and went into the reception area. There was a huge fish tank there and Bella went running over to it. She laughed at the fish and described each one to me. After I registered and told her it was time to go in, Bella said, “I just want a little more time looking at the fish. I’m not ready.” The nurse told her it was time and she cried, “I’m not ready. I need more time.” I assured her that we would still have time before the surgery and convinced her to go back with us to the pre-op room. I wasn’t ready either. 

In the pre-op area, I was instructed to cover Bella once again in pink foam, wipe her down, and dress her in a hospital gown. My hands shook as I coated her body with the stuff and I worked hard to hold back tears. We found a movie for Bella to watch as we waited. My mom joined us here and arrived before the surgeon came in to speak to us. 45 minutes before the surgery, they gave Bella a medicine to calm her down. It quickly took effect and she began laughing and yelled out, “I think I can do this! I’ll be asleep the whole time. Hahaha!” She then quickly fell fast asleep. This was before anesthesia was ever administered. 

Isabella’s surgeon came in and introduced herself. She was kind and gentle. She talked about loving animals and hearing that Bella loved animals too. She described what she would be doing and about how long everything would take. She assured us that a nurse would check in with us every hour to give us updates. Meeting her put me at ease. She was the right one to do this. I sent up a little “thank you.” 

When it was time, the anesthesiologist came to introduce herself(another woman, hoorah!) and let us go with her as she wheeled Bella to the OR. Though Bella was already asleep, my mom and I gave her kisses through our masks and watched as they wheeled her off. My heart pounded and my chest hurt as I watched her go. 

Due to COVID, the regular surgical waiting rooms were closed. My mom and I sat on a bridge that connected two parts of the hospital and looked out on the street from the sixth floor. It connected the CICU where Bella would be after her surgery and the CCU where she would be after her time in the ICU. As promised, the nurse called every hour with updates. The first call came to tell us that the surgery had begun. The second call was the hardest. They stopped her heart and put her on the bypass machine. While I appreciate and marvel at modern medicine, nothing is reassuring about the fact that the heartbeat you’ve heard since it was in the womb, that heartbeat that sounded like a symphony, was stopped. 

I thought about that first time when I was only a couple months pregnant and my OBGYN turned the monitor on my belly; that moment I heard Isabella’s heartbeat and realized my new purpose in life was to protect it against all odds. The cardiologist told me that this defect happens in the 4th or 5th week of pregnancy. As the surgeon was repairing the defect, I tried to remember what I was doing during those early weeks of my pregnancy. Did I even know I was pregnant yet? Did I do something that caused this? My entire pregnancy and for the last 7 years of Bella’s life, they’ve told me her heart was good. How did everyone miss this? It just didn’t make sense to me. And when you’re child’s heart is stopped, these are the thoughts going through your head. There is a desperate plea for answers. 

Isabella’s heart was stopped for just over an hour. It seemed like forever. I eventually turned my headphones on and began listening to Kirk Franklin’s “My Life is in His Hands.” The lyrics start, “You don’t have to worry, and don’t you be afraid. Joy comes in the morning, troubles they don’t last always.” Admittedly, my faith has taken a beating since my dad died. It is nearly numb and nonexistent if I am being completely honest. However, when your child is having open heart surgery, that faith returns fast. It is quite possibly the only thing that held me together that afternoon. And for some reason on this day, it was old Kirk Franklin and Fred Hammond albums that got me through. 

The next call I got was to tell me she was off bypass and they were finishing up. Her heart was beating again. She was breathing on her own. I took a huge breath. It felt like the first breath I took in days. After another two hours and two phone calls from the nurse, we got a call saying Bella was in her room and asking for me. I took another huge breath. She was done. I looked at my mom who broke into tears of relief. 

As we entered Bella’s ICU room, I saw her tiny 42-pound body in the huge bed with what looked like dozens of tubes and wires coming out of her. It was like I was seeing my baby for the first time. She looked so helpless and frail. She kept trying to open her eyes but she couldn’t open them. She let out little moans and asked for me. I took her hand, crouched beside her bed, and, through tears, sang her favorite, “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.” We had a long way to go, but she was still with us and she was more beautiful than I ever remembered. It was at that moment that she became my hero and a true heart warrior.

Stay tuned for her recovery story……

Mangia.

Tonight I was struggling. So much is going on in my life so fast and I was trying to process everything in a somewhat coherent way. I scrolled through my phone and called a few people, but I only got voicemails. We moved to this city four years ago and have built up an incredible village of people who support us through good and bad, but tonight I needed someone different. The stuff I am dealing with is deeper. I’m aching at my core and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why I am so lost about who to call and talk to about this. Then I remembered a time before when my panic attacks led to blackouts and life seemed like more than I could handle. I remembered who got me through heart monitors and death, unplanned pregnancy and big break-ups. It was that family I had created once, the family who called me Wilky.

At one point in my life, I started each evening walking into a dark and empty restaurant. The only sounds I heard were coming from the kitchen where fresh herbs and vegetables were being prepared with extra precision and care and fresh burrata and mozzarella were carefully crafted while spanish music played in the background. It was food preparation that took hours and was truly an art form. Each bite of food in this restaurant created a memory. It was to be savoured and enjoyed like an Italian Opera. It was not mass produced or created elsewhere. No. This food, these masterpieces, can only be found in a still small dining room in the heart of Pennsylvania.

That time of setting up before guests arrive was my sanctuary. My coworkers and I would prepare fresh whipped cream, dressings from scratch, and a fresh batch of sangria filled with crisp apples and juicy oranges. Silverware would be checked and double checked to be sure it was perfectly placed on the crisp white table cloths. Marinated olives would be stirred and hot Focaccia would be pulled from the ovens and placed on the cooling racks, filling the room with the smell of sea salt and rosemary. Candles were lit and small jars would be filled with dark green Italian olive oil. Every night brought new and exciting guests and experiences, but the set up was always the same. Like the routine of a liturgical church service, it was a holy process for me.

A shift in this restaurant often meant constant moving on my feet for 7 or 10 hours, but I never noticed, even when I was nearly 8 months pregnant. Our job there was to create an atmosphere where guests could come and forget everything else in their life. Or perhaps it was to celebrate the good in their life or share the sorrow. It was not a place to get a quick bite. It was a place to come and stay awhile and drink good wine, specially crafted cocktails, and the most incredibly prepared seafood, game, and exotic vegetables. It was a place where we took the time to learn about our guests’ lives enough to become the guests at their weddings and parties. It was a place where the desserts were so delectable, guests were talking about them for days and asking us to make them again. It was a place where professional upscale guests would be caught licking the bowls of their nero pasta because dammit, it is just that good! Guests left feeling like they had just visited family in another land.

I flourished in this environment. There is joy that comes in serving others and guiding them through an experience like nothing they have had before. There is joy that comes in creating a cocktail that perfectly fits their description and helps them forget any troubles they had in just one sip. There is joy that comes in working as a team to bring this experience to several hundred people on the busiest nights of the year, sometimes in masks and costumes. There is joy that comes in memorizing a menu in Italian or Spanish or knowing how to describe the difference between 20 different dry red Italian wines. There is joy that comes from serving the food of the most talented and creative chef many of us will ever experience in our lifetime.

The real joy, however, came at the end of our shift. Most nights, we would say goodnight to the last guest, clean the dining room, and then sit at the bar and have our own glass of wine. We shared stories of the night and stories of our lives. No topic was off the table and advice was always given with love and understanding. This was the life giving part of our day. This was our confession booth, therapy couch, and late night phone call to a friend all wrapped into one. These people, this family of mine, got me. I belonged there. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I felt like I truly and completely belonged with them. We fought sometimes. We judged each other sometimes. We disagreed often. In the end though, we pumped up the music, moved the tables out of the way, and danced it out. No matter what happened between us, we were always able to end an evening with dancing and laughter: pure joy. There was nothing a little Aretha Franklin couldn’t fix.

We recently lost a family member and his name went by as I scrolled through my phone. That tightness in my chest made me long to hear his voice and talk to him about what I am going through right now. He would know exactly what to say. He always did. I can’t talk to him. I can’t sit at that bar with those people and talk to them tonight or dance out the pain that life brings, so instead I decided to listen to Nina Simone while I drank too much wine and reminisced about a group of people who I love and miss dearly.  

back to life. back to reality

Five years ago, I would have been ashamed to post this photo. While 4 miles is no easy task, the time it took me to complete them tonight was about twice what it used to take me to run four miles. Tonight I had to run, jog, and walk to get there. Also, due  to toddler difficulties, I had to do it on a treadmill. Again. After 10pm. Five years ago, I ran at least 5 miles 4 times a week and 10 or more on weekend days and biked the 22 mile greenbelt around Harrisburg at least once a week. But this isn’t a story about a runner who is trying to win a race or be the fastest or show people how good I am at running. This is a story about someone coming back to life. It took me three years to slowly fade away and it will take time to come back.

After I had my daughter, I got back to running, lost more than all the baby weight, and felt absolutely amazing about life. Then, for reasons that made sense at the time, I decided to move to Philadelphia. In many ways, things have gone well for me here. I bought my first house, I found a job I love and fall in love with more as it grows and changes, I connected to a church community and a parenting community, and I began building a village for my daughter. But some of the reasons for moving here turned out to be empty promises and were emotionally difficult to deal with. In the last two years, I have almost completely stopped running, my diet has been completely out of whack, and I have let depression win on more days than I’d like to admit. I turned down social invitations choosing to stay home and secluded instead. My body and my overall health has suffered as a result. Some friendships have suffered as well. I focused so much on who I used to be that I forgot to become her again-in a new improved state. And worse, I forgot to enjoy who I was at the present, double chins and all.

About a week ago, I realized that my daughter would be four in a month. Four. She is starting to recognize my behaviors and even imitates them sometimes. She recognizes when I am sad and she asks me about it. I want her to see the best me that I can be(hokey I know, but it’s true). I don’t want her to start imitating the me who sits in front of another episode of Scandal while eating a block of cheese and drinking a bottle of wine. She deserves to know the me I was 5 years ago when I found out I was pregnant the day after I ran a half-marathon in Nashville. The excited, giggly me who did not give a fuck what anyone thought of me. The me who did my thing, painted horrible paintings, but loved them, the me who laughed obnoxiously out loud multiple times a day, and the me who ran everyday because it was the one thing that made me feel my dad’s presence. I want her to see the me who at 35 found out I was pregnant and was going to become a solo parent and just said to myself, “OK Bek, let’s do this!”

On Mother’s Day I was still up at 11pm taking care of a messy kitchen and a sink full of dishes. I caught myself smiling. I realized just how wonderful things really were. I was standing there in MY kitchen, in MY house, washing dishes from my incredible daughter. I was overwhelmed with gratefulness for everything in my life. When I was running that half-marathon 5 years ago, I never would have imagined that I would be standing in a kitchen I owned washing dishes from a kid I had. The excuses I have used to avoid life have only clouded my view of the wonderful life I have been gifted.

That’s all it took to make me decide to get back to it. I promised myself that I would run, jog, or walk at least 2 miles a day for two weeks. At the end of that two weeks, I will make a new promise. On Sunday morning, I will be running my first race since that one in Nashville in September 2012. It is a 5K and I am already a little scared. The thing is, I am also excited. Bella will be with me in the jogging stroller the whole time. And soon, she will be running beside me. And even if I am the last one across the finish line, I will still celebrate and be grateful that I am able to complete 3 miles and do so with my daughter right in front of me cheering me on.

I leave you with an excerpt from Jen Sincero(an incredible author who I highly recommend) that I have been focusing on this week.

“You can’t see the silver lining through victim goggles.”

“Have faith that you and the Universe have created everything for your growth and be grateful for it. No matter what. Get practiced at making gratitude your go-to. Notice the 8 trillion things around you at all times that you can be grateful for, and feel into the grateful expectation for all the things coming your way. The good, the bad, the ugly, The salsa stain you just got on your new white shirt, become a gratitude machine for all of it.”