My Story draft (2)

(originally posted 22nd January 2009)

Chapter 1- I’m all patched up

Someone once told me that life is too short and to make the most of it because you never know what was around the corner. And in today’s world all the tragedy stories of young teenagers losing their lives even before it has started only reinforces those sentiments.

At the beginning I never understood completely what the scar on my chest signified I didn’t know how it got there in the first place. One night when I was around 5-6 years of age I’d had a dream of being on an operating table. Years down the track mum informed me it was no dream but a memory of what I’d gone through a couple of years after I was born.

Mum cooed and cuddled me and gave me a tickle under my chin. I laughed and gurgled happily, we were stood facing a big mirror, and she was dressed in a pale green gown with a head wrap and a mask that hung around her neck. She looked happy sad but still smiled. She said something but I didn’t get it I didn’t know what was going on. Another woman dressed similarly to mum walked in and took me from her but I didn’t understand why mum wasn’t coming with me.

I felt my bare back on a cold hard metal slab and above my head I saw the over-hanging operating theatre lights. It was bright and strangely warm on my body. Shadow-like figured loomed large in my vision. They spoke in a foreign language and their kind eyes helped me to relax. One man even patted my head at one point. He smiled and said:

‘Everything all right. Be good.’

And the next thing one of the figures brought out a long black thick hose upwards towards my face. I kicked, screamed and squealed trying to get away but they held my down. That ugly hose edged closer until it covered my face. Everything went black.

Every night I had that same dream, as a child and when I was old enough to understand mum then explained that I was born with a Ventricular Septal Defect (VSD) and a heart murmur. Neither are thought of as particularly dangerous although with the VSD, because of the un-natural blood flow in the heart, babies with a VSD can have trouble breathing as well as not feed well. My family history to date reveals no one in the line has previous heart conditions problems, and I was the first.

So with the hole fixed up and the only reminder is the scar on the chest which I then dubbed ‘My worm’ life was sweet. I’d read up on VSD and the likes and learnt my parents could have taken the easy option and not gone through the operation but as mum said:‘If we you didn’t have the operation, the you would have had a poorer quality of life,’I was under strict order to take it easy, never over work and to rest as soon as I got tired, but with a second shot at living life to the fullest I took full advantage.