Congenital Heart Disease is a heart disease that is present at or before birth. So in simple terms, you’re born with a bad heart. There are MANY variations of this disease and it is one of the leading birth defects. I had open-heart surgery when I was a few months old and had a pacemaker operation when I was 17.

I recently started making comics about my life with this illness. Featuring my heart, Brady. Brady is short for “Bradycardia” which is the medical term for a very slow heart rate which is one of the things that is wrong with my heart. This series shows all of the weird and strange things he does. Joking about daily frustrations and struggles I have when my heart doesn’t want to do its job.

I started this series to cope with my own situation through humor and art but to also teach people about an illness they might not know about. Thank you for reading!

More info: Facebook

Mornings

Mornings with a heart that doesn’t like to do its job goes about as well as you’d expect.

Transmissions

When you have a pacemaker there are things you have to get into the habit of doing. One thing is sending transmissions of your pacemaker to your cardiologist every other month. I am bad at this. Sorry.

To-Do List

Brady has one job. But he’d rather be a chaotic evil potato.

Kind Of Works

A lot of things about me fall into the category of “Kind Of.”
Are you an artist? Kind of. Are you okay? Kind of. Does your heart work? Kind of.

Behavior

Brady’s behavior seems to depend on the situation. Sometimes during my cardiologist appointments, he seems almost healthy.
Other times he is actively trying to implode.

Stairs

Climbing stairs feels like climbing a mountain when your heart wants to give out halfway up.
Also, the “We got this. We do not get this” is a whole mood for just how art school and college were in general.

Too Young

When you have an illness like CHD two of the most common things you’ll hear is “You’re too young” and “You don’t look sick”.
I need my pacemaker to get through life every day. When I got it put in my surgeon told me she once put a pacemaker into a two-year-old.
Heart disease does not care how old you are.

More Than Enough

This was a night during my freshman year of art school. I had a really bad CHD scare and contacted my friend. It was late but she still showed up.
I didn’t know what to do or what I wanted her to do. I just knew I didn’t want to be alone right then. She sat with me for as long as she needed to. It helped. A lot.
This isn’t just a CHD thing. If you want to help someone through something you don’t understand. CHD scares, depression, anxiety, episodes, panic attacks, or whatever else. Simply just being there is often more than enough.
It nice to know you aren’t alone when life gets scary.

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