Vaccinate me, then donate my heart to science
- Melissa Herrera: Not Waiting for Friday
- March 21, 2021
- 807
A year ago we went into lockdown. Last week we got our second dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. I stocked up on Tylenol, orange juice and bananas, plus finished all the work I needed to do just in case it hit us sideways. In the end my husband had muscle pain, and I had a full fridge and even fuller bottle of Tylenol — no side effects.
I’m thankful for science, for the people working grueling hours to save lives with a few precious drops injected inside a very long needle. I’m thankful for our local healthcare workers who have been administering the vaccine. At the risk of being shunned, I’m thankful I wasn’t raised to believe faith is the only way to get well, that if you get sick and pass away, that’s just how it is. Saying that out loud sounds ludicrous, yet over and over I’m deconstructing that very notion.
But progress and preventative care have given many people longer lives because of what has been learned and put into practice. I know now that in the 1800s I would’ve been the one to die in childbirth. I had three cesarean sections, yet modern science has allowed me to have relatively low-risk surgeries so my children and I could live.
I’ve had an alarming several months that I mostly haven’t talked about.
My heart had been palpitating intermittently in what I believed could only be the beginnings of my demise. My mind went to the worst thing Google could show me, and I was sure my dad had given me the dreaded tendency for heart disease.
For a while I ignored it because it didn’t cause me to tire or have symptoms, but I reasoned that I shouldn’t be able to feel my heart beating out of my chest. I told my doctor, and she promptly scheduled an EKG, which read abnormal. She then scheduled me for an entire plethora of blood work and tests including an echocardiogram and nuclear stress test.
Tests on your heart are no joke. I saw more neon-colored images of the electricity coursing through my arteries than I ever cared to. I had 15 minutes of pictures taken before and after my stress test, as well as had technology pumped into my veins so they could view my heart as I sweated on the treadmill. It was an entire process, and I was unsettled. But what is life except for a series of unexpected events we can’t control?
When you’re having tests performed, you imagine the technicians seeing what’s onscreen and thinking “this poor lady doesn’t know how sick she is” but continuing to smile and push you through what needs done to get results. I trekked away and lasted as long as I could at ever-increasing speeds and inclines, just shy of running. I am not a runner.
At the end of the day, I went in to see the cardiologist. I told her what I’d been feeling, and she listened, carefully, and probed for more. She didn’t feel I was at high risk, even with several factors.
The echocardiogram results were in by the time of my appointment. “These are excellent,” she said. “Your heart is working and pumping as it should.”
The stress test results would be the kicker.
And they came back clear. My heart was in top-notch condition, she told me at my follow-up appointment; every test plus blood work had come back normal. The specter of my dad’s heart disease had dissipated. I could breathe again.
Science let me know what we could rule out. A doctor’s experience could let me know my palpitations were most likely menopausal (applause!) or possibly the result of the stress of nearly six years of writing about politics. We may never really know.
What we do know is because of science I was able to take two doses of a vaccine that will help to protect me from COVID-19, which as of this writing I have avoided. I know my heart is in proper working order. I know accessibility to healthcare allowed me to listen to my body and do what needed done. There’s nothing like science, mixed with a bit of faith, that makes you face your own mortality, and know that no matter the result it is good.
I want to add I believe healthcare should be for all. Many people fall between the cracks without preventative care. Testing like mammograms, colonoscopies, heart screenings and so many more save lives. Everyone deserves preventative care, plus the full array of services available. I believe healthcare is a right.