“I had always thought of my heart as the two of us against the world. My heart and me — that was it. We could do this. It was more than an organ in my body. The seat of the soul, my heart, was part of my personality. I wasn’t ready to concede the fact that I was going to lose it forever. It had weathered the storm with only 10 percent function and sustained two potentially fatal episodes with barely detectable blood pressure, events that would have likely been too much for even the healthiest heart to handle. As weak as it was, my heart had gotten me to this point. It stuck with me. It was determined to see me through, and I somehow felt as if I couldn’t leave it now. As strange as it seems, I wasn’t thinking about how much I needed the transplant to survive. I was focused on what life was going to be like for me from a spiritual standpoint. Over the years since discovering it was damaged, I had developed a spiritual connection to my heart. I talked to it regularly and visualized it being encased in healing light to open up whatever chakras were blocked — whatever bad karma was happening in the heart. I concentrated on treating my heart with loving-kindness and prayed for the chance to let me get it through this. I would silently say to my heart, the doctor said you shouldn’t have made it through,”