Nine months after moving to North Carolina, Ryan was
laid off from his job. It was a terrible job that he could not leave due to a
contract with the company. We saw the layoff coming, but Ryan could not avoid
it by seeking other work. In addition, we had been unable to sell our
condominium in Florida, even though we led the market selling price down by
$40,000 and eventually sold it for one-half of its peak selling price 16 months
after listing it. We had to pay rent and mortgage during the lay-off. Thank
goodness his severance was generous.
Ryan picked up jobs here and there, continually looking
for a permanent professional position that compensated fairly. I continued to
work part-time and homeschool Colson. Our savings dwindled to nothing over six
months. We were two weeks away from being out of money and homeless. Talk about
stress. Talk about perspective. Then Ryan’s break came. He was offered a great
position where he could lead, learn and grow. There is no way to explain our
relief and thankfulness.
About a week later, the first health challenge hit. My
heart began to flutter incessantly. It was very unnerving. I went to my family
practitioner, who referred me to a cardiologist. Thank goodness that Ryan’s
health insurance began on the first day of work!! I tried to see Ken at OHS,
but his patient load couldn’t accommodate me for about two weeks. I had been
seeing him monthly for ten months before this mini-crisis. Ken said that he
thought my body was withdrawing from stress hormones because Ryan and I had
been living in a fight or flight situation for six months. He was especially
hopeful I would recover well because the flutters would disappear for a couple
of hours after I ran a few miles. I hadn’t run in years due to a back fracture,
but I felt that I needed to run, and I was in good enough shape to do it.
My visit to the cardiologist revealed nothing, other
than the flutters were not injurious or life threatening. I aced my cardio
test, and it became a joke as the Dr. maxed out the machine to see if I could
make it another minute, and then another minute. The nurses were pretty
freaked, but the Dr. wasn’t. Then they whipped me off of the machine and studied
my heart. It was great. Blood tests were great. The Dr. had no answer for why my
heart was fluttering non-stop. He said that Ken’s hypothesis of stress hormone
withdrawal was as good as any that he could come up with.
A week later, I was treated by Ken. One acupuncture
treatment resulted in a 75 percent decline in the flutters. Ken said that they would
play themselves out over time as my body adjusted to the loss of stress. Ken was
right.
Our lives began to happily normalize, and we continued
to embrace our new perspective of detachment for material things and
thankfulness for what we have. My health and our hope were returning.
Wow, Laura! Very recently I've started experiencing something like the "fluttering heart" (sort of light feeling in my chest, my pulse seems to be a bit irregular.) I'm also coming out of a time of great stress, things are getting better for us... so very puzzling. I'm going to think about this... I doubt our insurance would cover OHS so I have to think about what to do.
-Elizabeth L. (from HMN...)
Posted by: Elizabeth | May 01, 2009 at 04:15 PM