Now that I am 1% bionic, I am pretty much a super hero. You might think this is a pretty audacious claim coming from the blog of a disabled human, but hear me out.
You see, I have this terrible habit of dying repeatedly. Some people inherit genes for mermaid hair while others have sportsing or musical talent. My genetic inheritance includes a pair of mutated genes that mean I sometimes go into spontaneous cardiac arrest with such easy to avoid triggers as loud noises, fever, and emotions/stress. To boot, this rare congenital heart disease shows up in the human population with an incidence of 1:2,000 live births.
I am the 1%. 🧐
Except, instead of a yacht, I have a defibrillator implanted into my chest to restart my heart in case it stops beating properly. To be fair, the device alone probably is the same price as a yacht but not as much fun at parties—though it can be quite *shocking* on occasion. (Spoiler alert: the bad puns will continue.)
My heart became battery operated in my early thirties. I had an event of syncope that could have either been caused by dehydration or by having gone into a dangerous arrhythmia. Since there wasn't really a middle ground in terms of options, I erred on the side of caution and followed the advice of my cardiologist to get an ICD implanted.
Then the real fun began.
I ended up having five life-threatening arrhytmias within thirteen months. Two of them were paced back to a sinus rhythm, while the other three required my heart to be shocked back into normal rhythm. As if it were premeditated for effect, my last event was on Dec. 21st, 2018 in the middle of the night. It was the winter solstice and the darkest night of the year. Truly fitting for my "black night of the soul" story beat moment.
In summary: I’ve died multiple times and yet I keep coming back, I have a battery-operated heart, and multiple documented genetic mutations. I’m basically Wolverine, Iron Man, and while I’m waiting on my other X-Men powers to appear, I feel hopeful they will include telepathy so I can talk to my cat and telekensis so I don’t have to get out of bed as much.
But yeah. Seeing as I have a 100% survival rate, I am doing really well on the “not dying” front. Who among the able-bodied can say they have such good stats?
And that’s why I'm a disabled super hero.
