Tiny P Things…

One week from today, very early in the morning, we will check in to the hospital for tiny P’s next heart catheterization…

This will be her seventh heart cath since her heart transplant, so our tiny P knows the drill and so do we…but I don’t think it will ever be easy. We will always be a bundle of nerves in the weeks leading up to her cath, wondering about the biopsy results. Her last results showed zero rejection, and there is no reason to think that this cath won’t be smooth.

But this is the life of the heart world…

And our heart babies do well, until they don’t. And it often happens that they don’t very suddenly, and we hear the stories of kids we know in our heart circle who go into their cath, expecting all to go well, because it always has, only to get the very worst news. It shakes the parents…it shakes us all. All of us in the heart community rally around the tiny, fragile, fallen warrior, and all of us lift up our fellow heart parents as best we can, helping to shoulder their burden…but in the back of all of our mind, we are wondering when it will happen to us, and we are wondering how we will handle it when it does.

And then we go home, and we grab our tiny heart warrior up, and we hold them, and we smell their head, and we feel their warm body, and the beat of their heart…still strong, still steady.

We hold our tiny P a little closer, a little tighter these days, the days leading up to surgery. We always say, a little jokingly, it’s JUST a heart cath, it’s nothing, it’s our seventh time since transplant so obviously we’re pros…it’s the simplest of procedures. But, the truth is, no surgery is simple for a heart kiddo, and two hours under anesthesia is a big deal for any kid. We are old pros at this, but it will never, ever, be easy…

1 Comment

  1. Renate on July 7, 2016 at 11:59 am

    Prayers for P and you.

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