Every story has a beginning and so does mine…..Part One

Nine years ago when Pharon and I met I learned that he had heart issues and had a pacemaker/defibrillator in his chest. He suffered from cardiomyopathy (a type of heart failure) and he told me eventually he would need a heart transplant. I clearly remember having a conversation with my best friend and saying “Do I want to get into this?” I had grown up with two very ill parents and spent a chunk of my life in the hospital with them. I was at the point in my life that I desperately wanted normalcy for once. I quickly fell in love with Pharon and then his heart issues didn’t matter. We would figure it out. Besides he had that ICD in his chest so I had nothing to worry about right?

Soon after we got married we got pregnant with our first child. We were both so excited. He was almost 40 and I was about to turn 33 and it was our first child. This would be the first grand baby for both sides. The family overflowed with excitement and joy. My pregnancy was very rough. I was in the hospital constantly for blood pressure issues. At 32 weeks my blood pressure got so high that the machines could not read it and I had an emergency c-section. Brianna Avery Hameed made her grand entrance screaming and kicking on October 11, 2014. She had to go to the NICU for 19 days. Doctors told us she wasn’t coming home until December. God knew better. That is the first experience I can remember when Pharon verbally spoke out loud that it was because of God. I believed in God but never really was confident in how great He could be until I saw my precious girl defy all medical odds and come home early.

Fast forward to 2017. Pharon and I had been wanting another baby. By September we find out that we are finally pregnant.  In October Pharon was starting to feel sluggish and getting more and more out of breath. One day he had to stop twice on his way up the steps. Come to find out he was holding fluid. His legs were MASSIVE. His cardiologist sends him to the ER for IV lasix. A few xrays and blood tests later we find out he not only has Congestive Heart Failure but his kidneys are starting to shut down from the high doses of lasix and lack of fluids. When the ER doctor came in and said a kidney specialist had to come in I almost ran out of the room. I got to my truck as fast as I could and called my brother. It was happening again. The most important man in my life was going thru kidney failure. I had lost my father in 2008 from complications from kidney failure. To this day the sight of a dialysis port will throw me into a panic attack. I don’t even know if I was able to speak clearly but I remember sobbing on the phone to my brother. He understood my fear of dialysis. This is when the vicious cycle and almost impossible balancing act of too much fluid vs not enough fluid and too much lasix vs not enough lasix started.

From October 2017 until May of 2018 Pharon went into the hospital for IV lasix about every 8 weeks. In April 2018 we were going thru our birthing class. Pharon got so out of breath that he had to stop walking 4 times on our way back from the elevator. He had a consistent cough that would not stop. I had to get security to wheel him down to the ER. This time the fluid had built up so bad it was literally strangling his heart and started to fill up his lungs. He was literally drowning in fluid.  The doctor told me that if Pharon hadn’t come in when he did he probably would have died that night. What is going on?! I am having our second baby in a few weeks and my husband is in a constant battle for his life! God what am I supposed to be learning from this? When Pharon is in the hospital I am playing single mom at home. I am not strong enough to do this. This isn’t what I signed up for…..

May 22, 2018……our baby boy is vacating my uterus today!! Praise the Lord!!! I made it to 39 weeks and 1 day. 9:15am can’t get here fast enough. While this pregnancy has been 100 times better than my first I feel like I have been pregnant for 15 years and I am HUGE!! Minutes before my scheduled c-section Pharons ICD alarms. Something is wrong. Pharon being Pharon was like ok well let’s have this baby first and then I will go get checked out. I am having a fit, the nurses are having a fit. He won’t go to the ER. Finally my OB/GYN agrees to let him in the OR because they have extra nurses that can come in and deal with him if he gets worse. Deshawn Reggie Hameed is born and comes out with a full grown man cry. Deep voice just like daddy. I even asked if that was my baby crying! Even though Deshawn was full term he had to spend a week in NICU because his oxygen level was so low at birth. Hours later once Deshawn was settled in the NICU and I was settled in my room Pharon finally went to the ER. He was not going to miss the birth of his son.

After a week of tests and ICD readings we find out that Pharons heart had been in atrial flutter for almost 2 weeks. This is why the ICD kept going off. Less than a week after getting discharged from the hospital I was taking Pharon back in for a cardiac version. This is basically where they shock the heart back into rhythm. This was the “beginning of the end”.

Now it’s every 4-6 weeks Pharon ends up hospitalized. God I can’t do this. When Pharon is gone I have to take care of the kids alone and Brianna misses her daddy. I can’t do this. God my kids are going thru what I did as a child and spending way too much time in the hospital. Lord I can’t do this. I can’t handle the stress. The entire weight of the household fell on my shoulders.  There were times Pharon was too tired or weak to even carry our baby up the steps for fear of dropping him.  I became so stressed that I started lashing out at everyone around me. Things that normally I would not think twice about would completely set me off. I felt like I had zero control of anything in my life. No matter how hard I tried to keep sodium out of our diet or monitor Pharon’s fluid intake he kept getting sick. Lord what am I supposed to do? I am trying to make him better and its not working.  I am trying make a stable home for our children and its not working.  

“I am chosen, not forsaken, I am who you say I am. You are for me, not against me, I am who you say I am”. See the thing is I have always believed everything the Bible says. I just didn’t always believe everything was true for me. The good stuff didn’t seem to happen for me. I felt like God didn’t allow some of the same great things for me like other people got. I didn’t feel the emotional security that I should have felt. The lyrics to “Who you say I am” by Hillsong Worship hit me like a freight train the first time I heard it in church. If I believe what the Bible says then I believe it. If God says I am not forsaken and not forgotten then I am not. If God says I am strong then I am. This is where faith comes in. The word Faith, by definition, means COMPLETE trust or confidence in something or someone. Not half trust, or trust sometimes, or only for some things. Complete trust. I decided that even in the midst of the monthly hospital visits that if God said I can handle it then I must be able to. I may not understand how or why but if He says I can do it then I guess I can. It doesn’t mean I can’t be scared. It’s normal to be scared. It’s a whole other monster to let fear control your life.