can only really be known after the fact. And still, my husband’s choice ultimately came down to this for him: I want to live, I dream of more life. That decision, and all the health issues leading up to it, is what gave renewed meaning to the word providence for me. Providence is the name of the hospital where my husband met a rock star medical team, became a patient and, just a few days ago, received an LVAD. It was a long, sometimes scary and grueling process, but every effort was meticulously made by the team to ensure that we would round the bend of this life-changing event with as much education and support as possible. Part of our training was learning about the lifestyle changes, the biggest of which for my husband was no more swimming, kayaking or soaking in the hot tub after a float on the river. He’s a water guy who swims like a spaniel and loves the sound of the whoosh of water over his paddle. However, the exit site opening in his body that connects the internal LVAD mechanism to the external batteries that power the device make submersion in water absolutely off limits now. Learning the guts and idiosyncrasies of the external mechanism and practicing what to do if and when the alarm goes off was, and will continue to be, a big deal too. The alarm is, well, alarming, as in LOUD, and rightly so, because if
you lose power, you’re in trouble. So approaching the screaming device in practice sessions with some degree of calmness, while being mindful of the need to be quick about it, felt like a being part of a NASCAR pit crew, only the car is my husband’s heart. And now, that heart no longer has a pulse. Unlike the human heart, the mechanical heart provides a continuous flow of blood, not pulsated. So there is no reassuring thump-thump to be heard on people who have an artificial heart. When the training team first told me this would happen after the LVAD was placed, a part of me wondered how it could be possible for a human being to be alive and yet no longer possess that one certain sign of life: a strong, sure pulse. Something about this absence made my own heart ache. I have put my hands over my husband’s heart almost as long as I have known him, under countless circumstance and always as a pause point to remember something easily forgotten in the rush of our daily lives. The reminder to take a breath, to remember what matters most, forgive each other’s anger, remember each other’s value, forget the everyday battles between us and find the peace. “Do you want to listen to his heart?” the ICU nurse asked me the day after surgery. She held a Doppler Stethoscope in her hand and handed it over to me.
“Where do I put it?” I asked, clutching the device in my hands, worried that I’d place it wrong on his chest and hurt him or dislodge one of the multiple tubes coming out of his body. “Really, you could put it almost anywhere on his body and hear it,” she answered, taking the stethoscope from me. Then she held the bell of it on his chest with one hand, waving me over to her side with the other, and handed the ear tubes over to me to listen. My husband looked at me expectantly, as if what I heard and how I responded to it would set a tone for this new phase of his heart’s life and, likely, our life together too. At first, expecting to hear a pulse, I heard nothing. But as I settled in to the idea of simply listening instead of demanding to hear what I expected, a space opened up for a new sound to come. It was low at first, and quiet, but as my ear tuned to a new frequency, I heard it clearly. It was the sound of the whoosh of life, as strong and sure as the spring current flowing across the paddle of a kayak, constant as the river that holds the kayaker and his dream. There’s a long, uncertain road ahead of us with this mechanical heart and the transplant that may follow it. But I already know the providential message in listening with new ears: If you are lucky enough to hear the second chance pulse of a river, you are lucky enough.
www.spokaneclub.org | Winter 2016 | 7