It’s been a tough winter. These allergies have really gotten me down. I finally figured out that tree pollen is the culprit. Unfortunately, we followed the budding trees all over the country and managed to hit each region just as that yellow poison was at its peak. An all too familiar pattern has emerged, brought on by my heart failure and resulting poor health. A sniffle turns into a full blown cold which turns into a sinus infection which has me pleading with God to take me now. My mom used to say, “I’d have to feel better to die.” She was right. By the end of March, I was bedridden, sleep deprived, too nauseated to eat and banished to the guest room because of my incessant coughing. This sorry state lasted for almost two weeks. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did.

It was Friday evening, April Fool’s Day, but this was no joke. It was around 11:00 in the evening. Because I could only cat nap and had to do that sitting up, I was sort of cocooned in a mountain of pillows. I was waiting for my cough-medicine buzz to kick in, when all of the sudden something happened. I am used to weird things going on with my heart and I am usually not scared. This was different. I didn’t recognize it. It was violent. And it knocked me out. Unconscious. Thank goodness I was already lying down.

When I woke up, I shook it off, got up and went into the bathroom. I thought maybe I had had a stroke. I was trying to remember all those tests you do if you think someone’s had a stroke. Isn’t there an acronym for it? I couldn’t remember, so I started with my face. I smiled. It wasn’t crooked. That was good. I raised my arms. Was that even part of the test? I don’t know, but I did it anyway. They both worked and they were in sync. Good. Then I tried to say the alphabet backwards. It’s hard. I’m old and tired and my cough medicine was kicking in. But I did it. A few letters at a time. I figured I didn’t have a stroke. Maybe I had a heart attack. That seemed unlikely,though. I don’t have any cardiovascular disease.

Then the light bulb went off; I think my defibrillator shocked me. But it didn’t hurt. It’s supposed to hurt. That’s what all the literature says. It’s supposed to feel like getting kicked by a horse. But it didn’t. It was intense, yes, painful, no. But what else could it be? I spoke to my doctor the next day. Yes, indeed, my defibrillator had shocked me. I have a monitor that sends nightly readings of my device to my doctor. How high tech is that? He ran a few tests and determined that I was OK. The defibrillator had done what it was supposed to do.

It’s been almost a month and it hasn’t happened again. I’m over my infection and I’m feeling better. Physically. But I’m scared. Scared to take a bath, scared to drive on the freeway, scared that it will happen again when I’m not in bed, scared that my ventricular tachycardia have come back, scared that I might have end stage heart failure, scared that I will die a horrific death like my mother did. But one thing I’m not scared of. I’m not scared of where I will spend eternity. Not at all. There’s a lot I don’t know, but one thing I do know, I know my redeemer lives.