No Looking Back – School’s Out and Life Begins (Pt VIIII)
Chapter 11 – Challenges and (I Hope) Inspiration
Like most people, I have faced many challenges throughout my life to date. Some beat me, others didn’t. I simply rose to the latter and found another way around them. And I have no doubt there will be many more in the future.
These challenges have included health issues, some of which I have detailed in their relevant chapters. But there are a couple I have not mentioned and the first of these could have made a lot of difference to many things throughout my life.
Had I let it.
I was born with a heart condition. It is one that you can only be born with, you cannot grow into it and you cannot grow out of it. But I did go through the first 30 years of life without realizing I even had such a condition. I had always thought that everyone has one, right? No. Wrong.
Called ‘Barlowe’s Syndrome’ after a Professor Barlowe who discovered it, it causes palpitations and occasionally racing of he heart. Well it did for me anyway. Like many health issues, stress is one of the major causes for it. Very occasionally one of these palpitations can be slightly painful and it was when this happened in my early 30s that I decided to ask my doctor about it. I was admitted to hospital to be monitored overnight but nothing showed up. I also did have another test that determined whether I was in the group of sufferers worldwide who are in the life threatening category. I wasn’t. The cardiologist told me I could either have an operation, which was very new and could not be guaranteed or go on lifelong medication. I opted for the latter. This medication would control the racing but not the palpitations. That’s OK. I could live with that.
Or so I thought.
Thirty years later, for some reason I became extremely stressed one day and this in turn, caused massive palpitations which lasted for some 17 hours. The more I panicked, the worse my heart became. And the worse my heart became, the more I panicked. Vicious circle in other words. But about 1 am on the Saturday, I had not been able to relax at all and my heart was not slowing down. Fear of the unknown; I was starting to worry about what would happen if it didn’t settle. So I woke my long suffering husband and he took me to Emergency at our nearest hospital. I was checked thoroughly, blood tests taken (results showing that there was absolutely nothing wrong). I had an XRay, same result. I was monitored throughout and this showed the only evidence that something was not quite right. But gradually my heart settled down. And after a couple of hours I was sent home. The following week I felt ‘odd’ for most of the time but gradually came to grips with it all. Next step was an ECG and to see a cardiologist. I did this a few weeks later and everything was completely fine, except that a very minor leakage showed up, which only requires annual monitoring.
My medication remains the same, which is fine. It is a comfort, though, to realize that I could not have had more tests on my heart to find there is next-to-nothing wrong. Sometimes, when I do start getting stressed, my heart starts to have fun and I have palpitations but I can now tell myself that I am absolutely fine. I do understand that sometimes if there are other issues with your heart (eg another virus or disease) that can lead to dire consequences. But for me, that was all ruled out with the blood tests.
Very reassuring, I can tell you.
There was just one other occasion when I started to wonder about my own mortality. It was when I miscarried our baby boy, between the girls. Again, I became very seriously ill in a very short space of time. And my waters suddenly broke far too soon. I was whizzed off to hospital and honestly cannot remember ever feeling so ill. I was put in a birthing ward as they expected me to miscarry overnight.
That didn’t happen and I just became weaker and weaker. Not nice. And I had reached the stage when I was just beyond caring. But things moved in a hurry when my gynecologist arrived next morning. Yes, I lost the baby, tragically. But, thankfully, they did manage to save me, although even that was touch and go for some hours. Many tests were taken to see what had caused this. Some of the results showed recognized issues, others didn’t and to this day, I understand that they were never able to distinguish a couple of the problems that I had.
I was discharged at the end of the week and my mother was able to come over and look after both our eldest daughter and me while I regained my health. And this took quite a long time. I had been incredibly lucky even if we did lose our son.
My reason for mentioning all this is that, when I do look back over my life to date and some of those health issues that I did suffer, I honestly do feel I have been incredibly lucky and, perhaps, somewhat inspirational. I could have just stopped and not done anything further with my life.
I also feel that my Dad’s book and the epiphany that I experienced in my mid-50s were probably among the best things that could have happened to me. There are a lot of people who cruise through life, never really finding their passions. Never really knowing exactly what they want to do and then acting on it. As is known, I have always wanted to write but if it hadn’t been for Dad’s book and that epiphany, both of which forced me to get out there and find out how to have a book published and then continue with all the things I am now doing, well, I possibly would have just stagnated. I really do not know what I would have done.
But I did. I pushed myself and now, today, I find myself in a position that I consider to be just so fortunate. Not only with all that I have done for myself, following my passions, but also with my life generally. I have made a wonderful life for myself in Perth. I have a wonderful husband and we have, to date, enjoyed 36 years of marriage. We have two beautiful daughters, both of whom are doing well and, overall, seem to be enjoying good health (OK, so I have been good enough to pass on my migraines and a few other health issues to them), one is happily married to a lovely man and the other has a wonderful partner. I have the most gorgeous grandson and I do feel incredibly lucky in that our grandson is growing up bilingual. Out of his grandparents, only one is actually a local and that is my husband. Our grandson’s maternal grandmother (Grandmere) is French Mauritian, his maternal grandfather (Grandpere) is from Queensland and I am from South Australia. And the mother of our second daughter’s partner (with me still?) is British.
And I have discovered and acted on my passions, while I am still young enough to enjoy them.
Challenges? Absolutely. But on the whole I got through them.
Surely that’s all pretty inspirational.
Honestly, how lucky can I be?
Ends.
While ‘No Looking Back – School’s Out and Life Begins’ has finished, I have many plans for the future. We continue trying to make our documentary, based on ‘Red Dust Dreams’ and there is talk of a feature film being made of my auto-biography, the book above. One of the many other projects I am currently looking at is a potential anti-bullying show, on which I am collaborating with a Canadian actor, who is also a past victim of bullying and has agreed (hopefully) to act in the film of the above book, as well as with several production companies. We do plan this to go to TV and to be aired world wide, eventually. One of the main ideas behind this show, called ‘Why Me?’ is to offer victims of bullying, school, work or whatever, a ‘voice’ – somewhere they can vent, anonymously or not, on TV. We also plan to interview specialists on air as well as celebrities, to get their feelings and opinions toward bullying as much as anything. We do have a few celebrities who have been good enough to say they are happy to support us – by lending their names and faces to our show as well as, perhaps, being interviewed on air. More are very welcome to join us with this. No payment, either way, at this stage.
There is more happening too, but at the moment, I do have my hands full with the above projects. Oh – I am still editing/proofreading manuscripts as well as helping/guiding others with the writing of their books and through to publication or whatever they want to do.
But, first and foremost, comes my family.
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