When you’re broken, you pick up the pieces you can find and move on. There really isn’t anything else that can be done. Putting things back together doesn’t work out, it’s never really fixed. With time, a scar grows where your heart broke and you do the best you can with what you’re given, but the heart is never really whole again.
I discovered my heart was truly broken in the emergency room of a hospital. I was eighteen and beside myself with grief. Within minutes of devastating news, my symptoms included shortness of breath, dizziness, heart racing and chest pain. Of course, I panicked, which is another symptom.
The doctors were entirely nonchalant while the nurses hooked up monitors and discovered my heart was broken, I had a mitral value prolapse. They were a bit concerned because while the condition often has no symptoms, I seemed to be having them all.
On the home front, I had just discovered a) I was pregnant and b) my new husband of about four months was having an affair. I suppose I was a bit stressed out.
After several days they released me from the hospital. They were unable to determine physically why the symptoms appeared. I was instructed to modify my activity and life based on the severity of the symptoms.
Since that day I've followed the doctor's advice modifying life to manage unexpected situations. Now, doctors and nurses just love to listen to this classic mitral value prolapse which requires no treatment.
