GRATITUDE

Thank you to my great friend Kelli for watching my little ones today for my stress test. I am so grateful for you! So, in keeping with my committment to be an accurate journaler ( is that even a word? you know what I mean anyhow)... All of my life, at least what I can remember, I have had heart palpitations, sometimes it feels like my heart is doing a somersault in my chest but it always goes away and I've always ignored it. Until about a month ago anyway. I started having chest pain and it started to get old. When Ryan was with me and it happened again, he insisted I see the Dr. So skip to today, I've had an echo, event monitor and EKG's. Today they wanted me to have a stress test since I've been having PVC's (premature ventricular contractions) and I don't want to take meds, I'm not big on meds if I don't absolutely need to take them, so they sent me for a stress test to make sure I don't absolutely need them. The good news is my heart is great. The bad news is I have biatrial enlargement which indicates lung disease. I was told today that I need lung tests to see how bad it is and that I will most likely need to take a steroid daily for the rest of my life to attempt to manage it. I can't tell you how many patients I've taken care of whose bodies are torn up from long term steroid use, the alternative is of course worse, but I was pretty upset. A month ago I was healthy and active, today I have PVC's and fairly advanced lung disease. In the grand scheme of things it's not really so bad. I'm not dying, I don't have cancer and cardiovascularly, I'm in pretty good shape. Thankfully, while I was sitting there waiting for 90 minutes for the test I was reading the Ensign. Seriously like 5 talks on trials, I was starting to worry that the Lord was telling me I was about to have a doozy of a trial and I was starting to panic about maybe losing my husband or kids or something devastating. Then one on Gratitude. So on the way home I realized this isn't the end of the world. I need to back up and remember to be grateful. We found out before I collapsed and died too young. It's not cancer. It's not my heart. There are meds to take care of it. I'm not dying. All of my kids and my husband are healthy and countless other blessings. Maybe this is my trial and I can handle this. I am so thankful for the Ensign, it always seems to have exactly what I need when I need it. The Lord is incredible!!!!!!