My big change

The decision

As I was sitting in that cold white room, with ten other beds replicas of the one I was sitting on, in a very exposed hospital gown facing my parents; all I would think about was, am I going to wake up after this.

It and been two days before my birthday, I was visiting my great aunt and uncle in Belleville, with my mother. My aunt, a very religious but goofy women loved when I came to visit, especially around our birthdays. My uncle, being a former pastor was also very religious but spent most of his time rewatching old football games. He did not seem to mind when I came down. My aunt and grandmother; who decided to visit at the same time as my mother and I, wanted to treat me to a surprise visit to the spa. I had never been to a spa but being a ten, almost eleven, year old girl was certainly open to the idea of going.

The spa was very fancy, it had a huge glass fish tank that covered the back wall. The women working at the counter must had been expecting us because she told us to pick out our colours and go right in. I had picked out a coral pink and was hoping that the manicurists could make it ombré as it went up my nail. My mother, grandmother, aunt and I all went into another room that smelt like bath and body works, we each got seated at different tables. I was seated down with a younger looking women who had blond silky hair that was swept behind her ears.

She started by soaking my nails in a bubbly liquid and then put some funny smelling cream on my cuticles. I had been feeling amazing that day, we had gone out for breakfast then come right to the spa and I had been super excited. The women started to push back my cuticles, at first it was fine but then it started to hurt, the women had finished my first hand and was almost done the second when I felt it but I had been so excited that I couldn't control it. Little did I know that something as little as not being able to control this feeling would change my life.

This was one of those feelings that I knew all too well, I had felt it when I got my grade four vaccinations and when I was in any sort of pain. My head started to spin, my whole body felt as though it had turned into jelly, I couldn't think nor see straight and there was nothing I could do about it. I woke up about five minutes later; I was disoriented and had a major head ache. My mother explained to me what had happened. I had fainted and fallen off the rolling chair I was seated on, on top of it all I had smashed my head into the rolling desk the manicurists was stationed at. The spa had called the paramedics and they were on their way.

Later that afternoon, after the hospital had ran a whole bunch of tests I was seated down in the cardiologist's office. The room was baby blue and full of animal pictures plastered all over the walls. The bed was also baby blue and was really quite uncomfortable. When the cardiologist came in he ran some more tests, as though he wanted to make sure that the nurses had done them right. After his tests he told my mother and I to sit down. He explained that there was something funny with my heart beat but since was I out of town he wanted me to see the doctors back at home.

After several months of waiting, I was finally in another cardiologist's office. Before seeing the cardiologist, I was brought to a back room so the nurse could do a EKG or ECG, take my blood pressure and do a ultrasound of my heart. When the nurse was done I was escorted to a office where we had to wait almost three hours to see the cardiologist. The hospital had closed down and all the nurses were going home when we finally got to see the cardiologist. She explained to my mother, father and I that I had something called WPW or Wolfs Parkinson's White syndrome. This meant that I had a extra whole in my heart and I had a decision to make, whether I wanted to live with this syndrome with the risk of cardiac arrest or have a surgery with very good success rates but still the possibility of dying. Two years later, I had made my decision, I was going to have this surgery done.  February 18th, 2015, as I was sitting in that cold white room, with ten other beds replicas of the one I was sitting; all I would think about was, am I going to wake up after this. I did wake up, with 100% success. I now live a normal fainting free life with the normal risk of cardiac arrest, but I can't stop wondering what if I didn't have the surgery or what if I had never woken up after it.