even in the smallest of things

ever since the crisis part of this incident has worn off i've been worried about how to keep that deep appreciation alive for pete, for our boys, and for anyone who is important to us. there just doesn't seem to be the same amount of urgency to enjoy everything about life right now.

i had a very non-crisis moment recently that made me realize that the intensity of emotion doesn't have to be determined by major events. i was driving home from a friend's house just a street away. i let the boys ride in the front seat together since it was not even 1/4 a mile. instantly will turned up the radio all the way as we were listening to the "Wheels on the Bus." i think my first reaction normally would've been to turn it down right away and tell him to stop. instead i took a moment to actually see my boys in this moment. they were elated and singing along as loudly as the music was playing. instead of turning it down i started laughing and singing along with them until we got home. what a difference that made! the intensity of my emotion was running really high at that moment, and i was grateful to know that i still have the ability to feel intensity without a crisis.

as we are still healing from the emotional effects of such a crisis, i am realizing that it is ok to let go of that crisis mode. i'm ready to return and give focus to the daily routines and habits that are creating a well-worn groove of connection between the members of this family. we all have the opportunity to love deeply every day and in every moment; we shouldn't waste the smallest of things waiting for a big crisis to remind us how important people are in our lives.

new and improved

not that pete needed improving before.

and i wouldn't even say he's "new".

he's more like he was in 2000.

since he has been "back" he's more like he was

when we were just dating.

i have to admit i'm loving it.

he's a little more rugged.

he goes unshaven & is scruffy a lot.

(Sam is the only one that minds that.

he says pete doesn't look like a dad

with hair on his face.)

his hair is getting wildly long & curly.

he wears slippers & down ski vests again.

did i mention how much i'm loving this?

it even makes me feel 10 years younger.

he talks to me & laughs a lot more than i remembered.

it's almost like a whole new way of flirting.

and it makes me feel like it's new love again.

except deeper this time around.

i think the only thing we are missing is an old land cruiser.

anyone know of one for sale????

a return to work

i just wanted to announce that i will be returning to work on Jan. 14. i look forward to getting back into doing hair and reconnecting with so many friend clients. i know many of my clients were given the link to this blog and have been following the story. for those of you that are reading and would like to get back on my book, please send me an email at jenvanderlinden@gmail.com. emailing is a much easier way to communicate right now. for those of you i don't hear from i will be making calls over the next week. if you have never been to me before for your hair and would like to, then you can also send me an email. i work on thursdays, and i would love to meet some of you that have been so supportive of our family through this blog.

i hope to hear from many of you soon and look forward to getting caught up again.

what are we doing?

i took the boys shopping today. i went to a local favorite where we go to find great bargains. i didn't have anything in particular in mind; i just wanted to get out and do something that used to be normal. however, it ended up not being normal at all. i was quite overwhelmed at what i was doing there. i was overwhelmed at what everyone else was doing there. after being faced with death and having an added perspective to life, the old habits just haven't had the same meaning as they did before. don't get me wrong, i don't think that there is anything wrong with shopping or doing things we enjoy. i just felt guilty being there today. it just seemed meaningless when i knew other people were driving to the ICU to see their dying husband and knowing how that felt. it made browsing a discount store seem very insignificant. i really began questioning what i am doing. what am i doing with this new knowledge? how am i spending my time with this new added meaning to my life? i feel it's a great responsibility. i'm just not sure what to do with it; how to keep this change alive and how to do the more meaningful things in life. how am i sharing that with others? what am i doing and what am i going to do the rest of my life knowing what i know now? hard to say. i just know i don't want to blow this.

the most normal day

i think today was the most normal day for the boys, especially sam. they were really affected by pete's incident. sam woke up while everything was happening to pete. he heard and saw almost everything. that was very unfortunate; he is a child that remembers everything and processes things in a very grownup, emotional way. he has had a very personal struggle with all of this and has said many troubling things that i don't feel is appropriate to write about here.

one incident that i will share was his reaction to going church without dad last week. i was going to take the boys and leave pete home. all morning sam was so upset about not wanting to go to church. i finally asked him why he didn't want to go to which he responded... "i don't want to leave dad home by himself. if dad falls again, then there will be no one here to help him and no one here to call 99999-1!" needless to say, i didn't go to church last week. that reaction was very telling into how he was still being affected by this. today was telling, too. all morning sam was thrilled to know that pete was going to church with us. all of his weird anxieties about things seemed to be gone. he didn't have a melt down about what clothes he was supposed to wear (that is MAJOR since pete's incident!!); he even told me with a big smile as we were walking into church that he didn't need to cry about his clothes anymore; he said he would just wear the clothes i picked out as he ran to catch up with pete. he was an angel child in church, excited for every meeting, and curled up extra close to his dad while pete was there.

it seemed that this was a very important step for sam in pete's recovery. for the first time i think he actually believed us that his dad was going to be ok. perhaps it was the first time since all of this happened that we were doing something "normal" with the whole family and nothing weird about it. sam was definitely different after today. thank goodness he is healing, both of them :)

check

-presents wrapped & under the tree.... check

-stockings filled.... check

-2 little boys snuggy in new christmas pjs & slippers sleeping soundly.... check

-a tired mom & dad who are about to fall asleep standing up.... check

-a wife who can't believe how lucky she is to have a husband for Christmas morning.... definite check

we had planned on doing lots of fun, simple traditions this year for christmas; we were trying to have a handmade christmas. everyone's wheels had just started turning with creative ideas when pete had his incident. needless to say, those fun & simple ideas didn't really happen. however, i couldn't deprive sam of making a doll for his cousin emi; he wouldn't let that go. i'm grateful we did. it was a big success; i'm certain sam and will are going to have a hard time parting with that doll tomorrow, especially will. that doll has been the hot item around our house lately; it does whatever we do and has been seen tagging along with will on every indoor excursion he has had. sam had a very active hand in the creation of this doll. he chose the fabric, hand-stitched the top of the head closed, and guided all of my design choices (although i had to ax the 4 eyeballs to make her an alien girl; i thought the red eyes were freaky enough). he was so proud that he finally knows how to sew. :)

i couldn't let the christmas pjs go either, so i somehow managed to get those made through all of this. i'm happy to have a bit of handmade in our christmas gifts this year.

mostly i'm so happy that we have a whole new perspective on christmas this year. we know and can feel it's not about presents. it is about a gift though, the gift of life. not only the gift of pete's life, but the gift of Jesus Christ's life. He has truly made all things possible, including peace and including miracles. the celebration of life will now be the new tradition we take into every christmas season forever.

wishing you all the very happiest christmas ever.

cardiology update

pete had his 1st follow-up with the cardiologist today. before i write about that, i think it's important to explain what actually happened to pete on the night of the incident. this is the best explanation that any doctor has been able to give me, but even they don't know exactly why this happened to pete and they said they will probably never know. i will try to explain the best i can with my lack of medical knowledge and vocabulary; for crying out loud, i had to have a medical translator through all of this! thanks, cydney. :)

pete did not have a heart attack. he had a cardiac arrest. they are different things. a heart attack is damage to the heart muscle usually from a lack of blood flow within the heart. the lack of blood flow during a heart attack is usually caused by some type of blockage to the arteries. the heart muscle begins to die or starve to death, and this death is what causes the chest pain. just to clarify again, pete did not have a heart attack. his heart and arteries were perfectly clean which is one of the signs it was not a heart attack. he had a cardiac arrest. a cardiac arrest happens when the heart stops pumping blood. when the heart stops pumping the blood pressure drops and is unable to pump blood to the rest of the body. there are several reasons the heart could stop pumping blood. sometimes the heart is extremely weak and begins to just quiver uselessly instead of pumping. it might also start racing so fast (fibrillation) that it can no longer fill with blood. cardiac arrests can be caused by heart disease, but they can also occur without any unknown cause. with pete, we are in the "unknown cause" category.

pete's story... the theory has been relatively the same from every doctor that has cared for pete. we know pete has had an abnormal arrhythmia maybe his whole life. that means he has an irregular heart beat. he has always felt like his heart is racing and beating out of control. he actually saw a doctor about it almost a year ago, but they couldn't detect anything at that time so they wrote it off as mini anxiety attacks. pete and i were not convinced by that diagnosis. honestly, pete having anxiety attacks???? hard to believe by anyone who knows him well. we didn't know what else to do, so we did nothing.

what is suspected to have happened that night was pete went to bed feeling normal; at least he did not indicate that his heart was racing, and he can't remember now what he was feeling that night. they believe his heart started beating in that abnormal arrhythmia which caused him to go into ventricular fibrillation (V-Fib). V-Fib is an erratic, disorganized firing of impulses from the ventricles. the ventricles quiver and are unable to contract and pump blood to the body. at that time he was considered to be having a cardiac arrest, and the only treatment is CPR and defibrillation (this shocks the heart back into a normal rhythm) as soon as possible. thankfully he had both. i began administering CPR approximately 3 minutes upon knowing something was wrong. he was being defibrillated (shocked) probably 8-9 minutes from the time i knew something was wrong. i thought that was pretty hopeful; it all seemed quick to me, but the doctors were not convinced at the time that that would be enough. i was confused until i read this on the american heart website: "Brain death and permanent death start to occur in just 4 to 6 minutes after someone experiences cardiac arrest. A victim's chances of survival are reduced by 7 to 10 percent with every minute that passes without CPR and defibrillation. Few attempts at resuscitation succeed after 10 minutes." i certainly realized how lucky we were that the outcome was so positive for us.

the follow-up today didn't necessarily give us more answers about why this happened than we got in the hospital. we were certain that it was genetic since his dad experienced the same thing at age 49 and died from it eventually. however, no doctor is certain that it is genetic. they believe it could be random just as much as it could be genetic. they said at this point there has not been any abnormal symptoms from any test that he had through all of this that would indicate that it was genetic. we could have genetic testing done, but it is VERY expensive, and if it was genetic it wouldn't change the treatment. we have opted to not have the testing done especially since he has the defibrillator. they talked to us about warning signs to watch for in our children to rule out if they have been passed a defective gene, but so far so good there.

they did check his defibrillator settings today. they informed us that the heart rate level that the device was set at before receiving a shock is only at 170 (heart rate). they said they set it so low because he was still having a rapid heartbeat while he was in the hospital. now we will be fine tuning the settings since the device did not indicate that he has continued to have a rapid heartbeat. over the next 4-6 weeks he needs to have at least 2 normal workouts so they can determine a normal heartbeat for him during exercise. they expect that it will be reset to 190 or 200. the device will pace his heart if it goes higher than this and shock him if the device can't pace the rate out. we are just hoping that he doesn't get a shock during those first few work-outs. thankfully it's not dangerous if he does. they said it will feel like a really hard kick in the chest, but he should be fine.

i know that was a lot of information. i hadn't intended to write that much, but i realized the more i wrote the more i wanted things documented for us. we feel very confident after this appointment that he will not be having heart problems again. there may be a little fine tuning with his device, but once that is done he will be just as physically active as he was before and a whole lot safer now being that active. this appointment definitely gave me closure to that part of this scary ordeal.

cardiology.... check. now moving onto neuropsych.... i know that will check eventually, too. we are still feeling blessed everyday.