"Just keep swimming..."

During the months following my heart incident, I was very sick. My cardiologist had put me on a beta blocker which was slowing down my heart to prevent the rapid heartbeat from happening again. That, coupled with my high blood sugar levels coming down due to diet and even more medicine, left me weak and ill. Most days found me facing dizziness with bouts of nausea. Consequently, it was easy to stay on my diet-I could barely face eating!
One evening, I was laying in bed watching the movie, "Finding Nemo". I had taken to watching shows that were familar and comforting. I avoided anything with drama or action as they seemed to trigger a wave of illness as my heart reacted to any emotional stimulus. As I weakly lay there in my darkened bedroom, the fish Dorie, voiced by Ellen DeGeneres, repeated over and over, "Just keep swimming...just keep swimming..." And I found myself repeating the words with her, in the same sing-song voice, "just keep swimming...". Scatterbrained Dorie was just making a statement, no deep philosophical meaning behind it to her, but it's deeper meaning was not lost on me. From then on whenever that familar wave of weakness and nausea hit me, I chanted under my breath Dorie's words, "just keep swimming...". It really helped.