Day 183: The future, based on my heart.

To be quite honest, I don't even know where to start with this post. It's going to be a hard one to write. It's all about having to consider my hospital care in the future, and the impact that will have on my other major life decisions.

It all started a few days ago when my boyfriend and I started talking about his plans to apply for a graduate training scheme, and having a look at where we'd want to live, if he was accepted onto it. I'm all for this by the way, it just got me thinking. 

It made me think about where I would go to hospital for my heart check ups, if I were to move permanently outside of the East Midlands. Would it be practical to keep travelling all the way back to Glenfield for appointments? For the most part, that would only be once a year, which seems ok, but I would still have to stay overnight (probably back at my parents, which would be fine) and further down the line this would impact on the family life I plan to have. Would I move my treatment to another hospital, and if so which hospital would this be? 

I'm usually pretty adverse to change. I'm fine to be flexible on a daily basis about things, like in my job and normal day to day plans, but big things like this, I'm not a fan of change. I've found it hard to keep moving back and forth from home during being at Uni and down here on Placement and things like that. I tend to work better when I have a routine for most parts of life. I also never moved around as a child, so have not yet had to move my hospital care.

I don't doubt that anywhere else in the country is better or worse than Glenfield, but I really do like it there, I know where to go, I know who I'm going to see and although my consultant has changed a couple of times, I know the staff that are in charge of my care.

After my operation in the summer I have been told that I will have to have less invasive (probably keyhole) surgery every 10 or so years, to replace the valve that they are to put in. This is also something I have to consider, if I was to continue having my care at Leicester, I would then have to consider where I would be as I was recovering from future surgery.

If I do move where I have my treatment, I will have to consider where I live in relation to the hospital I will then be treated at because I don't really want to be travelling for 3 hours to an appointment if I can help it. It's just not practical.

I know these aren't decisions I have to make tonight, and we're not certain where we will be living/ working after Uni therefore I physically can't make decisions like this but I still find it difficult to think about. Realistically, it's my boyfriend's job that is going to be more of a dealbreaker in our lives than mine ever will be, his going to be the main income we have, just due to the nature of the careers we have both decided to go into and that's absolutely fine. The realisation that a heart condition that I suffer with, will have such a big impact on decisions about where we settle and where he works, that actually upsets me a lot. I really feel like I'm holding him back on his opportunities because I'm too scared (and a little bit stubborn) to think about things changing. I guess that makes me selfish, but I'm just not sure I could deal with the change. 

I rarely have issues with my heart condition on the whole- this upcoming surgery has caused a lot of emotional strain but in my whole lifetime this isn't going to be a great deal of it. Overall I don't really have a great deal of negativity about the condition itself, it makes me who I am and the scars show my story, I'm proud to wear the scars and have something about me that makes me a little bit different from others. It's only really times like these, when I find points that it does have to be taken into consideration in this way, that it gets me down. The only other thing that it really has stopped me doing, is play rugby which although I'd still absolutely love to do, in comparison it's not so much of a big deal. 

I don't want to have to base life decisions such as where we take jobs and end up living on which hospital would be providing my care and whether I want to move my care from Glenfield. Bascially, I don't like this growing up and having to have my own house lark. It's not as fun as the movies make it seem...