Hour Before Dawn

Chapter 10

After having that episode of chest pain, Ye-jin did her best in managing her emotional stress to avoid such episodes again. Having Bin by her side to share her struggles with makes a whole lot of difference in her positivity. Over the next two days, Ye-jin constantly worked on her breathing exercises to get her lungs working more. The oxygen was the only thing serving as a barrier for her to be discharged and recover outside the hospital. Though still having pain, she has been tolerating moving around better with each day and has been managing it with oral narcotics instead of injectable medications.

While the two were talking about the arrangements they needed to make for their stay in Florida and their flight back to California in weeks time, they heard a knock on the door. They saw the cardiologist approaching them with a smile.

"Hi, you two," the doctor greeted. "How are you feeling today, Ye-jin?"

Bin offered his chair to the doctor and sat on the arm rest of the chair Ye-jin was sitting in, placing his hand on her shoulder.

"I'm doing okay, Doc," Ye-jin answered with a smile. She hasn't had any chest pain since her last episode a few days ago when she went through intense emotional stress. "Feeling better everyday."

"That's great. You look much much better compared to when I first saw you in the ER when you came in. You've come a long way," the doctor said with a smile.

"Thank you," she replied.

"I heard you're almost ready to go," the cardiologist said as he sat in front of them. "So, I wanted to talk to you about what to expect going forward before you get discharged."

Ye-jin and Bin paid close attention to the doctor as he began explaining her prognosis and the plan for her.

"You briefly talked about your options with your cardiologist in California but you haven't come to a decision, am I right?" The doctor asked, receiving a nod from Ye-jin.

Bin put his arm around the top of her back and gave Ye-jin a gentle squeeze on her shoulder as they listened intently.

"Once you're discharged, we'll keep you on the same cardiac medications that you're on right now, along with your other maintenance medications, okay? We've sent over your records here to your doctors in California so they're aware of all the issues and treatments you had here."

Ye-jin nodded in acknowledgement of what the doctor said.

"Can we rely on her maintenance medications to manage her heart issues, Doc?" Bin asked.

"There are a lot of people who stay on meds and are able to maintain a pretty normal lifestyle. These are the low risk patients. However, considering your family history, your symptoms, your heart showing signs of failure, and the results of the additional tests we did here, you're in the high risk category. Unfortunately, a more invasive treatment is most likely needed. I'm not your main cardiologist so once you go home, your doctor there will discuss undergoing an open-heart surgery with you further down the road."

Bin felt Ye-jin take a deep breath, making him rub her upper back as he tried to be a strong support system for her. He took a big breath in himself and reached for her hand, making her look up at him. She gave his hand a squeeze as she felt the heaviness inside again. It had gotten so quiet in the room that she could hear the hissing of the oxygen from the cannula in her nose.

"Then should I expect that we're pushing through with a surgery, Doc?" She finally asked. "Is there no other option where I won't have to do a surgery?"

"Because the risks are too high for you, my recommendation is for you to have the surgery done, especially because you're already showing signs of heart failure. It'll help with the blood flow in your heart and throughout your body. From the looks of it, this was already a problem even before you were having symptoms. At the time when you started becoming symptomatic, like having chest pains, it was already at an advanced stage and at this point, medications might not be enough. Of course, we're going to give the meds the chance to work, but we have to be proactive in managing it. In your case, the risks are too high if we wait too long."