Monday, May 24, 2010

Myocarditis

After a month of sitting around waiting to find of what happened to the love of my life... we finally got an answer.
Let me tell you how frustrated I am with people's initial thoughts to the death of someone who is young. It has to be one of two things to them.
1) drug overdose
2) suicide.

and I guess at some point i might have had the same outlook? i mean if I watched the news and someone said they found a 25 year old dead in his home. i would assume that.
but when John's toxicology came back the day after he had NOTHING in his system. not even aspirin,
this was odd coming from the guy who would take 5 tylenol if he had a headache.
so, we just didn't know what to think.
what could it possibly be?
they had pointed to cardiac and left it at that.

after a month they found it to be a rare disease (actually viral infection) called myocarditis.
this is all i really know.
20% of sudden death in young adults is caused by myocaridits.
it's a virus that's attacks the inner part of the heart.
the symptoms are your normal "boy, i don't feel good..." symptoms. nothing fancy really. nothing shocking and out of the ordinary. you just dont feel good.
and that's how john was. he wasn't feeling good. but he was functioning fine. we went to bed. we watched tv the night before. we woke up and snuggled. it wasn't like he couldn't get out of bed or had any crazy fever. etc.
in fact, i read that myocarditis can only be actually detected through a heart biopsy.
some people get it and have no idea... and then they get better the next day... or, they have heart failure.
it is completely unfair. it's completely random.
it makes no sense. this whole thing doesn't. the virus doesn't either.
it's not hereditary.
it's not contagious.

it's just a freak of nature thing that someone tagged a fancy name on to.
it

and now that I know... do I really feel better?
absolutely not.
knowing doesn't bring john back.
i am glad i can explain it to people.
i am glad no one has to let their imagination run wild anymore
i am relieved it can't be passed on... to me or his family

but in the end i think about how through knowing all of this scientific research.. my soul still longs to understand the meaning of it all.
no fancy medical term can describe my own condition.
i am completely at a disarray. i am at a dead end here.
all i have is a fancy word.
but i am still clueless and empty.
this rare, undetected thing stole john. it snatched him away from me. and i am pissed.

there is no cause to join. no fundraiser for a myocarditis foundation. no myocarditis support group.

it's a term that so far... no one had heard of until this point. at least that I know of. i didn't know it existed... nor did I want to know. because before then i was living in my happy little bubble and NO ONE could burst it.
except for this.
except for the thing i dreaded the most.

when asked my worst fear i always replied "losing someone i love..."
what do you do when your worst fear becomes a reality?
that's like telling someone who is afraid of spiders that they will be surronded in a room with them for the rest of their life. no escape.
they have to deal with it.

i have no escape.
i have to deal with my worst fear daily.




so now that i know. now what?

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