Beautifully written

First I have to say if there are any grammical errors I have had to write from my phone since my computer crashes and in perfect time since I had to leave work and money has been tight so please ignore any missing letters etc the phone doesn't let me go back and correct !!!

 I don't know about you but I blog stock it's interesting to see others experience this heart world and know youre not alone or crazy!!!
 This blog is about bodie he's amazing and his mom as a writer is fantastic and can explain to the details of my heart and life

 I wanted to share newest post it hits home and to the core an even though we are recovering from the fontan it still is there so please read on she is amazing

 Amy thank you for writing



 Yesterday, a relative of Dusk's forwarded me a link to an article in his local newspaper, about parents who had started a nonprofit foundation in memory of their daughter Lauren, who had passed away from a Congenital Heart Defect. He sent it to me, saying that although the article was tough to read, the family was trying to make some good out of something terrible and had started a foundation and it made him think of me. It meant a lot to me that he thought to send me the article. I linked to the article and started reading. It took me just a few minutes to realize that this sweet little 3-year old girl had Hypoplastic Right Heart Syndrome (the opposite of Bodie - she only had the left side of her heart - different first surgery, same second and third surgeries, better outcomes generally as you're working with the stronger side of the heart) and that she had passed following her third surgery, the Fontan...the very same surgery Bodie is gearing up for. My heart literally stopped when I read that. It's not often that kids pass after the Fontan (most of the top surgical centers have survival rates between 95 and 99%). But it does happen. Typically the kids have other complicating factors, but not always. I found the girl's Caring Bridge site...and was met with photos of the sweetest little 3-year old girl you could imagine, smiling up at the camera just like any other carefree 3-year old. I scoured her site, looking for complicating factors, things that would make her higher risk, that would explain why she passed in a way that would mean it couldn't happen to Bodie. (Not that complications make it any easier when it's your child who passes, but only that it makes it easier for me to distance myself.) I came up empty-handed. She wasn't complicated. Her Norwood went pretty smoothly and her Glenn went smoothly. She spent the time between her Glenn and Fontan living a pretty normal life, just like Bodie. She geared up for her Fontan, the pinnacle of the surgical route hypoplasts must take, the make-or-break it surgery, where the land of milk and honey lies on the other side, the land of "no anticipated interventions for the foreseeable future." Her surgeon and surgical center were top notch. Her parents sent her into her Fontan fully expecting her to recover well from that surgery as well. They had no reason not to. Her Fontan went off without a hitch - the surgeon came out and told the family it had been a textbook Fontan. They saw their sweet girl transported into the Cardiac ICU, with the attending nurses and docs all saying how great she looked. Moments later, everything changed. They were called into a private room, with doctors and chaplains and told that something had happened. The mom actually said that no, she thought for sure they had the wrong family, that they had just seen their daughter and everything was fine.  But it was the right family, and their sweet girl had had an arrhythmia and gone into cardiac arrest. They had to re-open her chest, do chest compressions and place her on ECMO. She came off ECMO a couple of days later, but they had to let her go shortly after that. To be honest, the site doesn't give a lot of details, but I assume it was brain damage from the time spent doing CPR. When I read stories like this, I literally cannot breathe. My chest tightens. My world starts spinning and I get nauseous. (Anxiety attack? Yes, please.) I run to hug Bodie, to cling tightly to him, begging God to "please let me keep my son. Please don't take him from me." It is impossible to explain the sheer amount of death and sadness around me all the time, being so deep into the heart community where warriors are turned into angels suddenly, unfairly, irreplaceably fast.  But reading stories like this, of a child doing so well and then, just, inexplicably gone, as a result of a surgery that Bodie still has to have makes it so.much.worse. It is every fear of mine wrapped up in a pretty little box with a nice shiny bow. Pretty fantastic, right? I recently read a book written by a fellow heart mom about her journey with her son born with a complex heart condition. Although much of her experience was truthfully vastly different from my own, her discussion on anticipatory grief was dead on. Anticipatory grief refers to a grief reaction that occurs before an impending loss. The thing is, with heart moms, our loss isn't impending - it's hypothetical. It might happen. But it might not. Our kids might be gone tomorrow. Or they might live to be 100. But there is all kinds of grief wrapped up in just the thought that the loss might happen, that it is much more likely to happen with a child who has a congenital heart defect than a child with a healthy heart. But then I KNOW I should feel lucky that I still have Bodie and not let my mind get wrapped up in any grief - if it comes, it'll come soon enough. So then, I get to add a fun layer of guilt into the grief. It's truly impossible to explain to someone who hasn't walked this path. But trust me, to someone who has walked this path, it makes 100% perfect sense. You see sweet heart warriors become angels all the time around you. Why wouldn't/couldn't it happen to your child, to your family?  So why am I writing this? I'm writing this to ask for understanding. For an understanding of the sort of mindset a heart mom finds herself in. For extra prayers for our family during this time period leading up to Bodie's Fontan. I know we still have a ways to go (probably another year or so, unless Bodie has other plans), but truthfully, I know I won't fully exhale until we're post-Fontan. So, if I'm a bit neurotic (you know, more than usual), a bit more emotional, a bit more tough to handle, please understand why. I think I'm pretty good at "letting go and letting God" and trusting that ultimately, HE is in control, not me - but, as a human, as a mom, I am daunted by the thought of another open-heart surgery. I am afraid every.single.day that my son won't make it through this surgery, that my grief will turn from anticipatory grief to real, true grief. That, like Lauren's mom, I'll be left only with memories of my sweet toe-haired boy who once walked among us for far too short a time. And we have so many heart friends approaching their Fontans this summer that I get to live with this constant Fontan-reminder and the accompanying anxiety attacks.  So, yeah, if you have the time to spare, send some prayers up for our family - and all of our heart warrior friends. And especially, most especially, for this sweet little guy. Because I want a lot more moments like this in our future...