I have a very contentious relationship with my heart. It likes to do weird, fluttery things once in a while, but never when I have someone listening to hear them. It likes to skip a beat sometimes, it seems to me, but never when I'm laying down connected to ECG sensors. It likes to go faster than necessary, periodically, leaving me wondering where the fire is.
When I developed a blood vessel tumor in my spine, my heart liked to beat nice and hard there, a throbbing reminder of the constant pain. This is your heartbeat. This is your heartbeat from inside the tumor that wants to cripple and kill you.
Lately, with bladder and kidney infections complicating an enormous 10mm kidney stone that nearly made my whole system septic, I've had some really terrible headaches. Headaches where my heartbeat pounds away in the center of my frontal cortex. Where every throbbing, eye-clenching, forehead-cradling beat screams an alarm in my soul. Thudding, drumbeat pain. Feeling my heartbeat from the inside of my body, this time from inside my brain, just like how I feel it from inside the tumor in my back.
Just
Like
The
Tumor
Now you begin to understand the terror in our eyes when these headaches hit and my husband and I look at each other, and do not say what is not allowed to be. I'm scared and cry, and he holds me, and knows my fear. I just want to get better. I just want to get past this freak show and move on. I just want to keep going.
The headaches seem to improve as the infections are treated with antibiotics. We hope they go away soon. Maybe then we won't worry.
Maybe.
