So as many of you know, FI has a congenital heart condition, and has had 4 open heart surgeries in his lifetime to repair the defects. When we first got together, he was at the peak of his health, he was exercising, living well, happy, healthy, etc. He told me that he was perfectly fine now. His last surgery was when he was 10 years old, and 18 years later he was still doing great.
But as the time has rolled on the past couple of years, he has slowly gone from the healthy happy man that I loved, to barely able to do anything. I knew there was something wrong, he wasn't as active as he used to be when we first got together. He blamed the severe winter for it, and then the severe summer. Okay, fine. But then when it cooled off in the Fall, he didn't get better. In fact, he got worse. He was coming home barely able to move most days. He blamed it on not getting enough sleep. He'd never want to go anywhere because he was always tired. He wasn't very happy much anymore. He started calling out from work for FMLA more and more often. In December, he barely pulled in 20-30 hours the entire month, because he was so sick he could barely move.
6 months ago, we went to see his cardiologist in St. Louis for his checkup. He had an MRI done, as well as two echocardiograms. We were told he was doing alright, his pulmonary valve was leaking a little bit but nothing to be overly concerned about right now. He told us that any pulmonary valve replacement surgery would be years off down the road. Now, we saw his cardiologist last week, and he suggested a cardiac catheterization (minor surgery to run a camera on a catheter in through his vein into his heart, to see what's going on in there) because FI said he was always feeling so poorly. FI told him no, we can't do a cath right now, because he doesn't have the FMLA time accrued from work to cover it. So his cardiologist said okay, let's just have you do another echocardiogram, and you can call back in a week to get the results.
This afternoon, FI got a phone call from his cardiologist's nurse. Apparently, he has major abnormalities going on, and they are insisting that he get a cardiac cath done ASAP so they can determine whether he is a candidate for an experimental heart valve replacement that can be implemented in a cath lab, or if he'll need open heart surgery to completely replace the valve now.
These are my worst fears coming true. FI is trying to convince me that it's okay, he's had so many surgeries and caths and tests that it's not a big deal, and the chances of complications from surgery are really low nowadays. But that doesn't make me feel better. We live 4 hours away from the hospital he would need these procedures done in. A cardiac cath will take him a week or two to recover from. An open heart valve replacement surgery would take him months to recover from. I know we couldn't afford for me to miss that many months of work, and I won't have worked at Walgreens long enough to qualify for FMLA. His short term disability coverage at work would make it so he'd at least be paid during the time he was out, but I would basically have to drop him off across state, and just leave him there until he's well enough to travel home. I don't know if I can handle that, I'm so scared.
I was scared the other night, thinking that I didn't know if I could handle this, but now I'm being forced to. I knew this was a risk we'd have to deal with when I agreed to marry him, but I didn't expect it to be so soon. I want my wonderful fiance back, the one that I fell in love with when we first started dating, but until he has these procedures done, it won't happen. And there's still a slight chance it won't anyway, depending on how well his heart accepts the valve transplant. I'm just not sure what to do, and I feel so alone... thanks for listening to me. Excuse me, I'm going to go cry for a little while now before FI comes home from work.