There’s a 0.1-0.4% chance of being born with a hole in your heart. Fortunately it hasn’t affected me very much, but every couple of years I have a routine echo to make sure it’s still functioning well. I’ve read about people looking up to a similar image when they’re pregnant and feeling very emotional when they see their baby. And while I wouldn’t know about that particular experience, this is the first time in 24 years that I felt emotional when looking at my heart on the screen.
My body and I have been through a lot together the past few years. At best, I saw it as defective and unruly. At worst, there were some nights, especially when it became very painful to breathe, where I lay awake and worried that maybe I was, in fact, dying. Luckily the way I relate to my body is evolving, but seeing a visual in real time of the surprising force with which my heart is pumping blood nonstop was somewhat of a wakeup call, an undeniable reminder of how hard our bodies are working for us.
