"Melinda-My Story"

Hi, My name is Melinda, and my husband has atrial fibrillation.

First of all, let me say that I come from a long line of passionate over-reactors. Everything is pretty much black and white to me, no middle ground. You have probably known many people like that, maybe even be married to one. It can be a topsy turvy life for your spouse. But in the last year and a half, I have started to change, and I've learned a lot about life, faith and that I can't control everything in life. Some things have to be handed over to the One who controls everything, and if I didn't know what faith was then, I know now.

When my husband Dave went to the emergency room that first time and was diagnosed with a-fib I thought, "well, that's it". Being the dramatic person that I am I started looking ahead to my future. What will I do without my husband, I don't want to live without him, he's too young to die. All of the crazy stuff you start to imagine when something that you aren't used to dealing with all of a sudden invades your world and all of a sudden, it's not your world anymore. You can be going along in life happily day to day and "bam" your perfect little world is being taken away from you. I still remember that first night that Dave was admitted into the hospital and I had to drive home alone. I cried all the way and all sorts of bad thoughts were rushing through my head, I had my poor husband dead and buried already. Now you know what I mean when I say that I am an over reactor. The next morning I got up around 6:00am and drove to the hospital where I was sure that he hadn't lived through the night. But of course he did.

Knowledge is the best tool to have in these situations, and as Dave and I learned more each day about his condition, I started to calm down. Especially after an a-fib episode was over. For the first year, I still panicked every time he would go into a-fib, I would just sit and couldn't do anything until the episode was over. I was so immobilized with fear.

As time has gone by, and I realized that he wasn't going to keel over on the spot, I started to get a "chin-up" attitude. I think that a lot of it was the fact that I stayed very busy with shopping for the right foods, researching and making sure he had the right proportions and picking up his ever changing medications at the pharmacy. I go there so often that I don't even have to give them my name anymore, they see me coming and get out the little white bag with whatever meds we need that week.

As we prepare to make the trip out west for the ablation, I've decided that I'm going to be the strong and positive one (hopefully) and try to contribute in a positive way.

It's odd that after a year and a half of being a total zombie at times because of fear, all of a sudden I have a peace of heart and mind with the ablation that will be done a week from today. I have no fears, no fears about the flight and a very unusual calmness about the whole situation. I attribute it to a gift of peace from Christ, who will never let us go through more than we can handle.

I'll see you in California!