Living with a congenital heart defect

This is one thing my wife said I should talk about.  First a little bit about my specific defect, tetralogy of Fallot.  Wiki has some basic info about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetralogy_of_Fallot.  My heart was a little different then described there.  In my heart the pulmonary artery was not even attached to the heart. 

Growing up I knew I had something wrong with my heart but I didn't really experience it.  My experiences consisted of frequent trips to the hospital for pokes in the finger or arm, some fun tests and some not so fun tests.  I also could not really keep up with the kids I would play with.  I really preferred playing by myself with my LEGO sets and Star Wars toys.  There were no "emergencies" due to my heart.  The only part I really remember "suffering through" was the hospitalizations.  I would have hospital stays for one of two things: surgery or a heart catheterization.  All of these things I will touch on in future posts. 

As an adult things have been a bit different and yet the same.  Most of the hospital visits and stays are pretty much the same as when I was growing up.  However I have had something new added: emergencies.  The first emergency was when I had a minor stroke.  That was a weird experience.  But probably the worst was last year when I had major heart arrhythmia's.  That caused a lot of ambulance rides and stays at the hospital.  It even included one night when I had about 10 shocks from my ICD within 2 hours, six of which were within 10 minutes.  The only other thing I can think of that I now notice and that I do get tired a lot more and a lot easier then I used to.  I'm also having to go through a treatment for a viral infect I got from some bad blood as a child.

What has kept me going?  Christ has been there the whole time.  Without Him I probably would have given up.  Despite of and because of all I gone through God has really blessed me, which, I will also talk about in later posts.

For now just wanted to get things started and general feel for what this will all be about.

God Bless!!!!
RyanKCR