Putting Your Heart On Ice

Saturday morning I had the rare pleasure of driving in the car. I was listening to West Coast Live, which is a local San Francisco radio show that is broadcast on public radio. They were interviewing Eleanor Coppola (yes, the wife of Francis Ford). One thing she talked about was something Francis had read in a book and it was the phrase, “Putting your heart on ice”. She described it as meaning a time in your life when you are frustrated and you aren’t doing what you want to be doing, what you were meant to be doing and you were just slogging through, maybe to just make it through a difficult phase.

Some would say that right now we are “putting our hearts on ice”, as we wait. I’ve heard people say that our lives are “on hold” until we can get back home. Certainly, this is true in many ways. But, life goes on no matter what and we’ve tried to live it as fully as we can, even when we are stuck in a hospital. Or, you could we have the privilege of being cared for by an amazing group of nurses and medical staff at an amazing hospital on an incredible life saving device. Because of this, Hana has a chance. We get to watch her grow and develop and really be an incredible joy in our lives. So, our lives do have a lot of joy. Maybe we are exactly where we need to be.

It also really struck me how ironic the phrase “putting your heart of ice” was in that it is exactly this that will happen when Hana gets her chance, her gift of life. A donor heart for Hana will arrive on ice. I hope we can always honor that gift with lives full of joy and gratitude.

It is with gratitude that I’d like to show a couple of things, that Hana has received lately. A couple of nurses made some things for Hana (and one thing is in the works).

Then, I’m very excited because an artist I first discovered years ago in Sackets Harbor, New York, when my sister lived there, heard of Hana’s story. She was inspired to paint one day and realized she was painting Hana. She shared this painting with us while it was in the works, but it recently was completed. Its been very exciting and we are really in love with the final work! I feel it really captures a certain part of Hana. When I showed Hana a picture of the painting, she said, “Hana! Hana!”

To see some of her other work, you can follow her Facebook page, The Art of ima.GINA.tion. Or you can visit her website.

Lastly, Hana is still doing great! She did slip and fall and hit her head the other day. This is always a big deal because she is on so many blood thinners. They do neuro checks every hour for the first four hours and then every four hours. She is fine. Tomorrow she has another round of IVIG therapy. She had two play dates in the last week that really made her day! Monday, another one of my sisters and her husband arrive. We are really looking forward to the visit!

164 Days in the hospital, 146 days post-Berlin Heart, 138 days on the transplant list.