The Tree

Emily

Looking at a normal heart is to peer into a colored labyrinth. Follow the maze of red sections, blue sections, black labels, black arrows, atria, arteries, aorta, veins, ventricles, valves. Blood flows in; parts open, and blood flows out. Immaculate chambers work together to separate and circulate the blood.

My abnormal heart requires a sewing pattern. Parts have been cut, inserted, and mended. I’m swaddled in a patchwork quilt roughly constructed from metallic stitches. It weaves a tapestry telling why I’m one in 100 people with a congenital heart defect.

At four weeks gestation, endocardial tubes merge, growing like a tree trunk, and then, the trunk sturdily severs off. With Truncus Arteriosus, the heart’s tree trunk doesn’t stunt and shunt; it persists, which causes pulmonary arteries to look like conjoined cypress roots.

The pulmonary arteries, carefully separated, get reconnected to the correct place on the right ventricle with a new piece of plumbing. Doctors call this a conduit because it moves blood from one place to another. This kind of surgery is not science. It’s a séance. At four days old, my heart was the size of a walnut, yet big enough to hold two souls. My surgeon acted as a medium who whispered me back from the dead. My life would forever be salvaged from another cradle’s occupant.

Only an infant, I faced a hundred adult decisions about how: how to advocate, how to fight, and how to live with a defect. As an adult, I don’t consider myself debilitated, just distinctly different. I’m far from average, yet don’t consider myself a statistic. I’m a person who merely happens to have a bonsai tree carved onto my chest. It grows up from my naval and branches at my sternum. Roots furrow across my flesh. They grip tight, possessing a gnarly, primal motivation to keep persisting. My skin is imprinted with twigs held back by suture markings. My torso resembles tough bark.

Slicing through my surgical scar would reveal some rare and unique growth patterns not common in Truncus Arteriosus. My left brachiocephalic vein didn’t form properly or was damaged at some point. Cardiologists aren’t sure which. What should be a stable, singular vein structure--just isn’t. The weird configuration looks like a wisteria tree’s tangled vines. My heart murmur whooshes like wind through tree limbs. My mechanical aortic valve clicks away mimicking a katydid hiding in the leaves.

These defects can’t be pruned back to normality. They have grown with me, and I have adapted to the heart I have. Being born with multiple anatomical anomalies is an asset to being human. My scars hint at all the hurricanes that should have picked me up, hurled me around, and knocked me flat. There’s no mistake in my design. I’m as resilient as a sequoia left standing after a wildfire. I’ve been created to survive a storm.