Tag: patient-experience

This is me Winning

According to Dictionary.com, a superstition is defined as:

  1. a belief or notion, not based on reason or knowledge, in or of the ominous significance of a particular thing, circumstance, occurrence, proceeding, or the like;
  2. a system or collection of such beliefs;
  3. a custom or act based on such a belief.

I’ve always been superstitious. When I learned how to play solitaire as a tween, that superstition quickly found a home. I began playing the game the way others might use tarot cards: If I win this game, it means good luck. If I lose, my wish won’t come true.

Oh, don’t worry—I know from whom all blessings flow. My faith is firmly grounded and not easily shaken. But sometimes, in my humanness, I fall prey to my feelings and find myself in need of distraction. Maybe control. In some way, superstition offers me a little of both.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about the difference between emotions and feelings. The clearest way I can sum it up is this: emotions are physiological reactions to stimuli, while feelings are the thoughts we assign to those reactions based on our experiences.

Why is knowing the difference important? I don’t know. It probably isn’t. But for me, I wanted a better way to take control of my feelings—a better way than sitting down with a deck of cards and telling myself that if I win this game, everything will work out just fine.

If we understand that emotions are simply human reactions to the world around us, then we can reason that, given enough time, those emotions will pass. Feelings, on the other hand, are trickier. They get tangled up with our beliefs.

The other day, I learned something that triggered an emotion I immediately attached feelings to. Those feelings made me deeply uncomfortable. I found myself wrestling with censorious, unfriendly thoughts toward another person—and toward myself. It felt like carrying an unwelcome burden of hostility, competition, regret, and maybe even a little jealousy. When I searched for the root of those feelings, the emotion they were tied to, I landed on anger. And I had to ask myself: What am I angry about?

My husband answered that question for me. I wasn’t winning. And it wasn’t really about winning, not exactly. It was about fairness. Equality. Balance.

We aren’t all dished the same plate of struggle in this life, and that reality was making me angry. But it is reality. No amount of whining, crying, complaining, or angry lamentation will change it. So I took a deep breath and chose to move on. Once I identified the emotion behind the feelings, I could reason that there wasn’t truly a need to be angry at all.

Still, as a human, I’m entitled to my feelings. More than that—I think feelings matter. So I processed them the best way I could.

I prayed.

Then I pulled out my deck of cards and set up a game of solitaire.

If I win this game, everything will be just fine.

First game—bam—a win.

This is me winning.

The Quickest Way to a Man’s Heart

 So, it turns out the quickest way to a man’s heart is not through his stomach after all. It’s through his neck—specifically, the internal jugular vein. Sometimes the groin, wrist, or upper arm will do. Ask me how I know. Over the course of my lifetime, I’ve had this done about 25 times.

The first time was when I was twenty years old. I had been diagnosed with supraventricular tachycardia, and the doctor assured me he could fix it with a procedure called endocardial ablation. I was taken to the cardiac catheterization lab—the Cath lab—where they accessed my heart through the femoral artery in my groin. It was scary (they use only light sedation, not full anesthesia), uncomfortable (I had to lie flat with sandbags on my groin for hours to stop the bleeding), and deeply embarrassing (again, it was my groin). I’ve only had this done twice since. I do not recommend it—unless, of course, they’re trying to save your life. In that case, by all means, embrace your overpriced bikini shave administered by a nurse’s aide, likely male.

Over the years, they’ve also accessed my heart through my wrist (twice), my upper arm (truly awful), and even a tiny spot just below the xiphoid process of my sternum. But when it comes to heart transplants, the preferred route is through the neck, via the internal jugular vein. Post-transplant, this procedure—called a right heart catheterization—is used to monitor hemodynamics (the pressures within the heart) and to take biopsies of myocardial tissue to check for rejection. Since my transplant, I’ve had this done 19 times. No sedation—just a little lidocaine in the neck.

The University of Utah, where I receive my care, is a teaching hospital. Which means that at nearly every turn—every procedure, surgery, or appointment—there’s a student, resident, or fellow eager for a learning opportunity, and I am the willing (or sometimes unwilling) classroom. Over time, I’ve learned to advocate for myself. After a few botched attempts by fellows trying to access the tiny veins in my neck or upper arm, I started saying, “Attending only, please.” In other words, only the supervising physician—the one teaching the fellow—gets the honors. If I’m going to be awake and fully aware of every cut, pinch, push, pull, and squeeze, then I’d prefer the most experienced hands available. Thank you very much.

Then, one Sunday morning, I received a text from a leader in our church. We were hosting a regional conference, and a visiting church authority would be speaking. This authority, Hugo E. Martinez, and his wife, Nuria, were both retired physicians. He had played a key role in helping our son receive cardiovascular testing while serving a mission in Ghana, so he was already somewhat familiar with our situation. Since he was visiting our area, he wanted to check in with us.

After the meeting, we went to meet him. He was warm, kind, and genuinely interested in our family and my health. Then he offered a piece of advice: be patient with medical residents and fellows—let them learn from you.

I was caught off guard. How did he know I had been limiting who worked on me? It was probably just coincidence. Maybe divine inspiration. But from that day on, I loosened my grip a little on controlling who was allowed to practice their medical skills on me. And in doing so, I found myself feeling empowered in other, unexpected ways.

There is something uniquely healing—and even cathartic—about sharing your story and watching others learn from what you’ve been through.

Look, life is going to be hard. It just is. And if you’re going to experience the awful parts of living, why not take back some control by owning the narrative? Share your story. Share what you learned. Share how it shaped you. Share it with the people around you—or with the people who might benefit from hearing it. And there will be many.

I’ve had the opportunity to share my story more than a few times. I’ve even had the chance to teach others—yes, including doctors—through my experience. And I’ll say this: I feel stronger every single time I do.

That said, no student nurses may come at my veins to learn how to start IVs. I have to draw the line somewhere.

In the end, I’ve learned that the quickest way to a man’s heart isn’t a catheter or a scalpel—it’s vulnerability. It’s opening yourself up, telling the truth about what hurts, what healed, and what changed you along the way. When you share your own heart—carefully, honestly—you invite others to learn, to connect, and sometimes to heal right alongside you. And while I may still be selective about who gets access to my veins, my story is always open. After all, hearts were never meant to be guarded forever—they were meant to be shared.