Good Things to Come

Almost 6 years ago I was having trouble catching my breath. We had gone to Lowes to buy a gas grill and I could barely walk the width of the store. Several hours later we went to the ER to find out what was going on. The triage nurse, looking bored by the way, sat me down and asked the standard questions while hooking me up to the blood pressure machine. I saw the results before he did and told my husband, "Watch his reaction when he sees that" It was 190/112 and I've never seen someone move so fast after looking SO bored.

The next thing I knew I was changed out of my street clothes into a hospital gown and they started hooking up all these monitors. All I could hear was the insistant beeping of these machines. My thought was, "OMYGOSH, I'm having a heart attack and they don't want to tell me" Shortly after that thought the nurse said, "That isn't you beeping, the machines aren't hooked up yet." Ya, I laughed.

The short-ish version is that we discovered some serious problems. My heart was enlarged, I was anemic, I had 50% regurgitation in the mitral valve in my heart, I had pericarditis (inflamation in the lining of the heart) and my pulmonary blood pressure was 70 (normal is 30). I was put on 7 different medications and sent home with the knowledge that in about a month I was going to have mitral valve replacement surgery. So for the next three weeks I was knocked out from the intensity of the medications pretty much just waiting for the surgery.

At the end of that three weeks we also discovered that I was pregnant. At 39 years old I was pregnant!! I have to admit my first reaction to the prenancy test was to smile. We already had 3 beautiful, funny, wonderful kids and as shocking as it was to discover after EIGHT years we were going to add another one, I really did smile.

So I started making the necessary phones calls to my doctors. First my OB. He kinda lost it. Said it was going to kill me with all my heart problems and I would have to terminate. I said, "It's not going to kill me today and termination is not an option" He met with my cardiologist and together decided I could probably get through this just fine.

The only hitch was getting through the heart surgery without losing the baby. I didn't know how that would happen. I went back to the cardiologist to have a follow up echocardiogram done to determine a surgery date and figure things out. It seemed to take forever for him to come back in the exam room. When he did come in he sat down and said, "I had to really watch your tapes and compare them to the ones from the hospital. I had to do that to know it was really your heart I was looking at and it was because of certain markers....because your heart is fine. It's back to its normal size, the regurgitation in the mitral valve is minimal but what REALLY stumps me is that your pulmonary blood pressure is normal. That never happens. I'm very stumped by this." Then he turned to me and said, "Are you a religious person??" I said, "Kinda" He said, "No really, are you? Because that's my only explanation for this." I said, "Yes, I'm LDS (Mormon)" He said, "I knew it!!"

With that the surgery was canceled and for the next 8 months I was in and out of the OB's office and the cardiologist office on a regular basis to make sure things were ok.

On December 31st 2005 Ethan Damon Cooke was delivered by c-section and was promptly placed in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and was there about a week. He was delivered a month early and his lungs weren't quite ready. He was 5lbs 8ounces and looked identical to his oldest brother, Taylor. He only had to be on a ventilator for about 12 hours and when I finally got to see him that night he looked so sweet. His delivery was a lot scarier than I have written here, but the end result has been this wonderful little boy and that's all that matters.

He'll be 5 this month. And he's the one who drew the smiley face on the car. That's his nature.

After that scare, and now to face breast cancer, I know the miracles of God first hand in my life. I know what He is capable of and on that note I would like to add the following quote. It's from Jeffrey R Holland a leader from my church. He's one of my favorites and his talks are truly inspiring. This excerpt comes from his talk titled, "An High Priest of Good Things to Come" from our church's General Conference in October of 1999.

"It is not without a recognition of life's tempests but fully and directly because of them that I testify of God's love and the Savior's power to calm the storm. Always remember in that biblical story that He was out there on the water also, that He faced the worst of it right along with the newest and youngest and most fearful. Only one who has fought against those ominous waves is justified in telling us-as well as the sea--to "be still" Only one who has taken the full brunt of such adversity could ever be justified in telling us in such times to "be of good cheer" Such counsel is not a jaunty pep talk about the power of positive thinking, though positive thinking is much needed in the world. No, Christ knows better than all others that the trials of life can be very deep and we are not shallow people if we struggle with them. But even as the Lord avoids sugary rhetoric, He rebukes faithlessness and He deplores pessimism. He expects us to believe!"

Keep the Faith.
Lisa