1 of 3

The oxygen in my respirator clicked off. "Breathe! Breathe! Breathe!" Dr. Wessel screamed through the airtight glass box I sat in at Children's Memorial Hospital. God, please be with me, I prayed silently. I puffed my cheeks up, pursed my lips around the air tube, and exhaled until my lungs felt like a hot spear had punctured them. I panicked. There was no oxygen.

Dear Jesus, give me strength.

"She can't do it." Dr. Wessel gave up and released the lock on the oxygen tank. He was trying to measure the air capacity in my lungs. I was supposed to exhale through the tube with enough force to flip a switch on the respirator, which would do the measurement.

I stumbled out of the glass box and tried to sit down, but I was wearing cords that hooked up to a heart monitor. They weren't long enough to reach the swivel chair that was a short distance from me. So I stood and listened to Dr. Wessel talk to my dad as if I weren't in the room. All along the click, click of the monitor made my beating heart sound like a bouncing ping-pong ball. "She just doesn't have it in her," Dr. Wessel said, scribbling down something on my chart, which looked thicker than a dictionary.

"So she can't run?" my dad asked.

Dr. Wessel shook his head. "Being on the track team seems important to her," he said, "but people with Transposition of the Great Arteries simply aren't athletes." Those five words—Transposition of the Great Arteries—had followed me around since the day I was born. I was born with a conditions cardiologists describe as "an upside-down heart," and I had to have open heart surgery just a few weeks after I was born. My heart had to work extra hard.

Still, my parents and I didn't focus on my heart problems. I had plenty of doctor visits and an occasional hospital stay, but my parents and doctors always helped me think about things I could do instead of things I couldn't handle.

But now I wanted to be an athlete. That's why I had signed up for track at my high school. I had gone to the first few practices and thought I had a chance of competing in the mile. Not many girls wanted to run the mile on the track team, so it was the perfect opportunity for me, I thought. Less competition was good. But before I could officially join the team, I had to pass a heart and lung stress test. I spent a lot of time praying with my parents that God would give me strength for the test.

Now my dad was asking Dr. Wessel if I could compete in any event at all.

"OK," Dr. Wessel sighed. "Amy's heart is very strong. So I will let her run the 100-yard dash."

"Thank you," my dad said.

"I want to warn you," Dr. Wessel continued, "she will probably always be last and it will wear her out. She'll give up long before I tell her it's not safe for her to run. If she wants to compete, she should take up golf. To be a fast runner you need to have the heart of a Porsche. Amy has the heart of a Ford."

Dr. Wessel unhooked the monitor wires. Then he connected me to a 24-hour heart monitor. He snapped a cassette tape in the purse-sized, five-pound heart monitor that hung at my side and told me to wear it so it could record my heart rate.

next page... |  1 of 3

				Try 3 Issues of Christianity Today Free! Name Street Address City/State/Zip E-mail Address Subscribe to Christianity Today and get 3 free trial issues. No credit card required. Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery. Offer valid in U.S. only. If you decide you want to keep Christianity Today coming, honor your invoice for just $19.95 and receive nine more issues, a full year in all. If not, simply write "cancel" across the invoice and return it. The three trial issues are yours to keep, regardless.