Everyone knows someone – maybe it’s you! – who has experienced an unwelcome, scary, distressing, or life-altering health issue that has shaken their sense of security, disrupted their ‘normal’ patterns of life, and caused fear or anxiety.
In this third episode of our series, Surviving and Thriving After Trauma, Lynn talks with author Lori Ann Wood about her grim medical diagnosis after almost dying of end-stage heart failure. Lori Ann turned her trauma and fear into a journey of self-reflection and spiritual growth, which led to a book called Divine Detour: The Path You’d Never Choose Can Lead to the Faith You’ve Always Wanted.
Lynn’s Conversation with Lori Ann
Lynn: Thank you for taking the time to talk with me today. As I told you before we hit the record button, I feel an instant connection with you as a sister in Christ. It’s neat to be able to jump in and have what I consider a pretty deep conversation about life. Can I ask how you found our podcast?
Lori Ann: I found you on Instagram through mutual friends, but the episode that hooked me was in June of last year where you talked about facing chronic illness and not losing faith. I knew from the name of your podcast that we were traveling the same road because you were talking about being in the weeds and I was talking about detours.
Lynn: I felt the same way when I started reading your book! I thought, "We're having the same insights, we're doing the same self-reflection, and we're talking with people about these things because we know that the weeds of life - like health crises - affect everyone”. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and what a typical day looks like for you?
Lori Ann: We are empty nesters, so it’s me and my husband at home, and he works full time. I am a writer and so I work from home. I aim for maybe three to four hours of really good productive time during the day as a blogger, and I work on my own writing and book marketing as well.
Those things keep me busy, but I have to compact my work to be able to get 10 to 12 hours of sleep a day because my heart is so weak. On the other hand, they say in the heart disease community, “If you're not walking, you're dying.” So we try to walk 10,000 steps a day. It takes a long time for me to get to 10,000 steps a day, but we work on that, and because of my severe sodium restriction, we make most of our own food.
Lynn: I’ve read a lot of devotionals and books on suffering, spiritual growth, and people’s personal journeys of pain, heartache, and loss. So when I first started reading your book, I wondered, how will this book be any different from what I’ve already read? But I quickly found that the fears, heartaches, doubts and losses that you have experienced were relatable, honest, and intricately woven with biblical truths in a way that stirred emotion in my heart. Could you explain how your life went from the “before” heart failure to “after” heart failure?
Lori Ann: Three weeks before I was diagnosed, I had a medical evaluation for a life insurance policy to see if I qualified for preferred life insurance, and they told me that I had less than 3% chance of developing heart disease in my lifetime. I wasn't surprised at that because I've always had low blood pressure and low cholesterol. I have no risk factors. On top of that, I've always just been really healthy.
Three weeks later it was Thanksgiving week, and I knew I wasn’t at the top of my game, but I thought I just had a simple infection. I had the meal to prepare and was getting ready for kids coming home, so I went to convenient care on Sunday thinking that if I got an antibiotic, I would feel better. In spite of that, I spent Thanksgiving day in bed because my body wouldn’t get out of bed, which was really weird for me.
The next day, my husband called our family doctor and insisted I be seen. The doctor listened to my heart and then took a chest x-ray. The chest x-ray revealed that I had an extremely enlarged heart – one doctor told me later it was the largest heart she’d ever seen. I was admitted to the local cardiac ICU, diagnosed with end stage heart failure and learned that my heart was functioning at just 6%.
If I had made a list of everything I was worried about ever happening in my lifetime - car wrecks, cancer - heart disease wouldn't have even been on the list anywhere. It was a grim prognosis. The doctors were not expecting me to leave the ICU.
What I learned as time went on is that heart failure is a chronic progressive disease. It's chronic because it doesn't go away. And it's progressive because it only goes in one direction. Medical science does a really good job of helping you manage symptoms. For some people, they can slow down the progression, but there's not a cure.
Lynn: Here’s a quote from your book that I highlighted: “Heard some news today from doctors: My heart function is “abysmal” even for someone with heart failure. But that’s not the worst part. Apparently, the heart is the only muscle that can’t heal. It is one of the least renewable tissues in the body. Though meds and certain devices can help, the heart can’t repair itself. So apparently, this is forever.” What is it like to get a “forever” diagnosis?
Lori Ann: From the outside, it looked like this carefully controlled and curated life was spinning wildly out of control, and in a way, it was. But when I look back on it now, we were blanketed in an overwhelming peace that I’d heard about but not experienced before. That peace gave us a merciful pause and allowed us to get things into perspective. We never lost hope.
Lynn: You mention that after the diagnosis you felt like you’d failed your children and your family. I think this speaks to the shame that often comes with a medical crisis. When our bodies start to “fail” us, it’s easy to feel like we’ve done something wrong and are being punished or should have taken better care of ourselves. How did you see that guilt and shame showing up in the early stages of your diagnosis? Is that still something you struggle with?
Lori Ann: Chronic illness affects so many people that you love, and heart failure is one of those where you have a much better outcome if it's discovered early, and I didn't discover mine early. It seems like it snuck up on me, and they still don't know what caused my heart failure - maybe a virus.
Now that I know more, I can look back and see that I had symptoms for maybe 10 years before I knew they were heart related. I explained them away, covered them up, and joked about them. I feel like I failed in not recognizing the symptoms all those years. There’s guilt in feeling that I should have researched, should have been more aware.
There's also guilt about feeling like I stole my husband's plans for the future. He didn't plan on being a caregiver. He didn't plan on working as long as he is to take care of my medical insurance. He didn't plan on not traveling because I can't do international travel. And I'm not the mom or the grandmother that I had hoped or planned.
Lynn: You tell a story in the book where you're having an ultrasound or echocardiogram, and your tech was a Christian who had prayed with you previously. You could tell from her body language as she was scanning you that things weren't looking very good. And then she said to you, “Are we still praying for healing?” and you and your husband looked at each other and had to ask, “Should we keep praying for healing, or accept reality for what it is?” Tell me more about that moment.
Lori Ann: We want prayer to result in our will being done, and that’s a hard thing to give up. What I’ve had to realize is that sometimes I’ve made an idol out of the result - praying more about the result than about my relationship with God. It helps me to pray a prayer of relinquishment - not that I’m giving up, or think that God CAN’T do a miracle - but that I’m giving it over to his judgment to do as he sees best. When you get to that point, you can feel relief from the burden of wanting a certain result.
It helps me to pray a prayer of relinquishment - not that I’m giving up, or think that God CAN’T do a miracle- but that I’m giving it over to his judgment to do as he sees best. When you get to that point, you can feel relief from the burden of wanting a certain result.
Lynn: What guidance or anchoring points would you give someone who is grieving the security of their health?
Lori Ann: One of my biggest realizations is that losses that are worth grieving come all throughout life. A lot of times we're tempted to not allow ourselves to grieve what other people can't see. We have to prove that we have something worth grieving or we're not allowed to. That's just not true. You can have all sorts of things that are worth grieving.
Grief has its benefits. It forces you into finding this firmer security, and to evaluate what's really firm in your life. We all learn eventually that our health is fleeting. I just learned earlier than some people do.
Lynn: You say, “Admitting our powerlessness over death unleashes us from the fear of it.” I know many of us fear death and dying; where do you find comfort when you’re confronted with your own powerlessness?
Lori Ann: My husband said to me at one point, "It's going to be okay if you don't get better." That hit me wrong when he said it, but he was wise. He said, "It's going to be okay if you don't get better because you’re trading what you can't keep for something you can never lose." And I thought, "That's right, and we're all going to lose this body. We're going to lose this life." The key is to find that thing that you can't lose before it's too late.
The key is to find that thing that you can't lose before it's too late.
Lynn: The reality is, whether you’ve encountered a life-changing diagnosis or you’re the picture of health, none of us knows when we will die, yet we know it will happen. As Paul says in Philippians, “To live is Christ and to die is gain.” If you’re living for the Lord, he’s doing something in and through your life. But if you die, you’re gaining the fullness of your relationship with the Lord. You will be fully known and fully loved. Death is the gateway to our eternal home. Ultimately, that is where we find comfort in our powerlessness over death.
We’d like to extend a huge thank you to Lori Ann for joining us today and sharing her story. You can find Lori Ann’s book, as well as information about heart disease symptoms, on her website, loriannwood.com.
For more info on this topic, check out our previous episode: Facing Chronic Illness and Not Losing Faith.