23 Oct 2020

Before we get going: He’s fine.

The last 24 hours in our lives have been spent dwelling an awful lot on my youngest son’s heart.

No – he hasn’t suffered a traumatic relationship break up, it’s a physical more than emotional issue. He suffered yesterday from atrial fibrillation, which for a 29/very nearly 30 year old, who had never had any heart related issues before, was worrying.

So we spent a lot of time sitting in a special area in the emergency department, with him attached to all sort of machines, and staring intently at his heart rhythm on the screens.

Again – short story, his heart is now doing the regular boring sort of beat that everyone’s heart is meant to be doing. He’s fine.

I now have print outs of the two different heart beat patterns – yesterday’s disturbing ones that left warning signs on the monitors, and this morning’s boring everyday version. I can barely tell the difference, so it’s lucky there are people in this world who know what they are looking at.

Life, like Josh’s heart, sometimes does seem to get out of whack. Sometimes things just seem to be stuck in a loop of “good lord, what now??” moments. People suffering ill health while on a much needed holiday, people having car accidents, then health issues, then health issues for relatives, then financial issues, and so on…. and on…. and on.

But in life, does your rhythm have to be the same as everyone else’s rhythm? Sure, cardiologists like heart rhythms to be the same boring pattern, but rhythms of life never seem to be the same.

Apart from the same one we all share, that is – we were born, and we will die. The stuff that happens in between those two points varies dramatically for all of us. Some people grow up, get a job, find a partner, have children, complain a lot, eventually retire from work, and enjoy life until they get older and more frail. But not everyone. Some people’s rhythms of life involve a lot of difficulty in achieving these seeming commonalities.

Is life better when the rhythm that your life beats to, is a little wonky? Or do you like a nice steady beat that never varies?

At the moment, in our family, we are very happy with nice steady beats.