One year ago, on January 15, 2019, I received my gift of life. Over the last year, I have felt it all because of this gift. My heart has brought me anger, happiness, sadness, excitement, and everything in between. Just like a good heart should.

So for my anniversary, let’s run down A Year’s Worth of Emotions, brought to you by my recycled heart:

Grateful. I’m living on borrowed time— every second is a blessing. Even the rainy days are beautiful. The worst of times are, in a way, the best of times. I told you once that I read somewhere, “You have to die once to really learn how to live.” It’s true.

Helpless. In the beginning, I needed help carrying things, like mail and groceries and bags. I was so ashamed of this. My mom had to help me take my first couple of showers because it was too hard for me to stand up since I was so de-conditioned from being in the hospital for a month. Sometimes, I still need help with heavy grocery bags. But I could shower by myself nowadays.

Bitter. Why did it have to be me? Why this age? Why at this time? Bitter feelings come and go. And they go, I promise you. But they can’t be stopped from coming.

Amazed. HOW IS THIS TRANSPLANT EVEN POSSIBLE? I ask myself this every day. I am in the field of medicine and I still don’t know how this is a thing. Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night and think to myself, “There is someone else’s heart inside of me right now.” And then I smile and go back to sleep.

Isolated. I was quarantined for almost three months. I had to sit with my own thoughts. I had people come and go, and I had social media to always turn to. But nobody really knew exactly what I was going through. And the thought of knowing that my life would never be the same as it was in November of 2018, the highest point that my life had ever been, gave me the shudders and made me feel quite lonely. I still feel lonely sometimes.

Creative. Canva became my best friend, and so did blogging. No seriously— I started Skyping with the good people of Canva & they loved my story enough to possibly use it for a new campaign. You all should use Canva. It’s amazing. They’re not paying me for this, I promise.

Hurt. Physically hurt from all of the trauma my body went through in the beginning. Afterwards, there isn’t so much pain. Right heart caths are done through the internal jugular vein (aka central line) and those don’t hurt … until you’re trying to sleep on your right side at night and it’s sore. Nothing some Tylenol at 2am with ice on your pillow won’t fix as you’re trying to get some sleep for your 7am ER shift. Telling the central line gods that you’ll never do a central line on anyone ever again if you could please just get some rest right now.

Bored. I watched so many Persian soap operas with my mom for those first three months that she stayed with me in Philadelphia. So many trips to A.C. Moore on Broad and Chestnut. So many friendship bracelets made. So many random greeting cards made and never actually sent out to people. Rubber stamps. So many rubber stamps.

Inferior. I am immunocompromised. Forever.

Annoyed. Tac level 7.1 repeat Tac level 15 repeat Tac level 5.8 repeat Tac level 21 and on and on and on…

Overwhelmed. Remember that time I got a heart transplant, and then my residency shut down, and then I had to find a new residency that was 1.5 hours away? And then I had to commute with the train in between cardiac catheterizations and I was exercising every day because health matters and my parents were calling to make sure I was okay all of the time and I was studying for boards and making sure I was taking my meds on time because rejection and…

Awful. Ugh, those side effects in the beginning. Meals didn’t taste so good. Moonface. My hair was falling out. Migraines. I embarrassingly went to the emergency department for chief complaint of “whole body pain” (which exists!) and I hated myself for that.

Burdensome. It seemed as though people were always afraid to be around me in the beginning. “Are you okay?” “Do you want me to get you anything?” “I cleaned my apartment for you!” “I’ll wear a mask if you want to come over.” “Do you want to sit? Are you okay?” I am sometimes afraid to tell others that I’m feeling sick or have a headache because most of my friends are doctors and I feel like they’d bring out defibrillator pads in an instant. And of course, the non-doctors would just call 911.

Jealous. I am so jealous of my former co-residents who were able to graduate to go onto their attending jobs and fellowship positions. They don’t know how lucky they are. I sometimes wonder about how much different things would have been if I hadn’t gone through any of this. If I had just lived the rest of my life like I was supposed to. And the thought stops there.

Loved. Between the thousands of texts, phone calls, visits in the hospital to the thousands of people I have never even met in real life who have been with me through social media …. I have no words. I just know that I love humans. That is all.

Anxious. I had one cancer scare.

Guilty. Someone else died in order for me to live. And do I live this life for her? With her? Who’s heart is this? Does it matter? Why am I beginning to ask these questions?

Empathetic. I was putting a hemodialysis line on a sick, comatose patient the other day and I walked through the whole procedure with him in the room. Step by step. Just me and him. “It’s about to be a tough few days for you, I know.”

Hopeful. The field of organ donation is getting so much recognition nowadays and I hope that I am helping out with that.

Inspired. To make a change in the world. Sounds cliche, but I swear that I’ve been saying this since I was a young girl. It’ll happen. Just watch. This year made me feel more inspired to make a change than any other year in my life.

I think that, most importantly, I felt— and continue to feel— thankful.

Not just thankful because I received a second chance at life. I am thankful for the outpouring of support from people all over the world emailing me on a daily basis. I can’t even believe it anymore. Those messages have kept me up all night and have made me cry. I am thankful to have become somewhat of an unofficial advocate for people who have been afraid to speak up about their own ailments. Even transplanted physicians emailing me, telling me that my story inspired them to open up about their own— there shouldn’t be a stigma. Thankful to be asked to do talks and lectures on the importance of empathy after going through what I went through. Thankful that I found a group of young women with heart transplants, now some of my closest friends, via social media who I can talk to every single moment of the day. Thankful to be writing (on my blog, others’ blogs, for magazines, for medical journals, and even for The Philadelphia Inquirer— I mean how is this even possible?) … and having others connect with my writing. Thankful to be asked to become a representative for women with heart disease for the American Heart Association. Thankful to help doctors and nurses, my own incredible colleagues, realize that what they do matters— I am a living testament to that. Thankful that, because of my story, hundreds of people have messaged me throughout the year just to tell me that they have registered to become organ donors. And wasn’t that what I had set out to do when I first started blogging, on post-op day 7, while I was in my hospital room and all of you were rooting for me? I didn’t know how the next few days, weeks, months were going to pan out. I didn’t even know if I was going to stay alive to continue to this blog. But I stayed alive. And I continued to work, to advocate, to love, to write, to spread my story.

And I continued to be thankful.

Thankful that, at least with this terrible thing that happened to me, some kind of good came out of it.

And that alone makes the last 365 days worth it.

Thank you for your love, support, kindness, and everything in between.

To end this post: here’s a photo I took when I was home (Los Angeles) two weeks ago and my favorite part about it is the [tiny] moon. I have a thing for dusk and the moon.