Chapter one
Due to medical problems, my parents tried for years to give birth to a child, but without success.
They never lost hope, despite the torturous treatments, the destroyed hopes or the three miscarriages. They wanted a child with all their heart and fought to keep the flame of hope alive
After a long and difficult journey, the reward for the tears shed by my mother arrived, and I was born to fulfill their desire.
Born prematurely at 7 months and weighing 1.8 kg, I depended entirely on the incubator, sometimes on the warm affection of motherly love.
I got the name Aimee, of French origin, which comes from the verb aimer- to love, because I became the great love of my parents from the first moment of my existence. At least that's what they told me.
Happiness did not last long. I was soon diagnosed with heart failure caused by some birth defects.
In a simpler form: my heart did not have enough power to pump the blood and nutrients needed by the body.
In its infancy, as in my case, it meant pills over pills for the rest of my life, being a disease that never heals, but can be kept under control.
I did not have a normal childhood, so to speak, being a child with health problems.
It is quite difficult to make a child understand that he has a more fragile heart and that from the first years of life he is not allowed to run with other children so as not to get too tired, that he is not allowed to eat anything because he has to keep your weight under control at all times, and that your whole life will depend on some medications.
During the night was the hardest, as the symptoms worsened during the night and I spent many of them with chest pain, chronic cough, wheezing, swollen abdomen and more.
However, I was always a happy child, with a smile on his face. I had the unconditional love of my parents and I didn't need more.
As a teenager, my condition worsened and I arrived at the hospital more and more often as if it was becoming my second home.
All the doctors and nurses knew and loved me, but their compassionate gaze always robbed me of the iron will I struggled every day to build. The drug treatment didn't help much anymore, and on the night I turned 18 I had the strongest crisis so far.
That's how I got here, on the hospital bed, connected to the devices to stay alive and with a cruel diagnosis: chronic heart failure in an advanced stage.
To be more concise, my life depended on a heart transplant that would most likely never come on time given the long waiting lists for such cases.
I try to be strong and alleviate a little the pain of my parents who, like me, are aware that there is not much time left.
"My lion's heart, hold on. Everything will be fine," I hear my mother's trembling voice as if in a dream. It doesn't hurt that I leave as much as it hurts that I leave them behind.
