3 of 7 of the Series: The Flight I Never Boarded

What a medical emergency taught me about presence, capacity, and the life we slowly accept as normal.

This week I went in for my one-week wound and device check.

That sounds simple enough. Very medical. Very routine. Very “let’s make sure the incision looks good and the little machine in your chest is doing its job.” And mostly, that is what it was. The wound looked good. The device was working. The technician was kind, careful, and professional.

Then came the part I was not emotionally prepared for.

During the check, he had to calibrate the pacemaker, including its upper and lower limits. He warned me before he did it, but he still had to briefly turn the device down.

And the moment he did, I felt it.

I immediately felt the same way I had felt in the ER. A little nauseous. Lightheaded. That familiar drain of energy. The beginning of that awful passing-out sensation. It only lasted a few seconds before he turned it back up again, but those few seconds were enough. My body remembered immediately what my mind had been trying to process more slowly.

My Reality Wall

Physically, it was not fun.

Emotionally, it hit much harder than I expected.

It felt like I had been body-slammed into a reality wall. My reality wall. The one I can explain intellectually, talk about gratefully, joke about publicly, and still have to actually feel in my body. I am dependent on this device in my chest. Not in theory. Not as an interesting medical fact. Not as a funny “Casey is a cyborg now” caption. Actually dependent. That is a lot to take in.

Intellectually, I can be grateful. I live in a time when this technology exists. In another period of human history, I would probably just be dead now. That sentence is dramatic, but it is also true enough to sit with. My heart’s electrical system stopped reliably doing what it was supposed to do, and now this small implanted device helps keep me alive.

I am grateful for that. Deeply grateful. And still, gratitude does not erase mortality. That is the part people sometimes miss. You can be thankful and shaken at the same time. You can be relieved and sad. You can be grateful for extra time and still need to work through what it means to know, in a new way, that your body has limits.

Feeling Better Can Reveal How Bad It Was

Before that device check, I had been feeling good. Better, actually. The dizziness, fainting, and blacking-out sensations were gone. I was starting to feel hopeful about getting capacity back. I was even joking that I might become competitive about step counts. Then a few seconds with the pacemaker turned down reminded me exactly why the device is there. That is where this blog really begins.

Because “when abnormal becomes normal” is not only about the symptoms I had learned to live with before the airport. It is also about how quickly we try to normalize the new thing afterward. We explain. We reframe. We make jokes. We find the gratitude. We tell people we are fine. Some of that is healthy. Some of it is necessary. Some of it is how we move forward.

But some realities need more than a positive frame.

They need time.

They need honesty.

They need to be felt.

And this week, my body made sure I felt it.

What Have You Been Calling Normal?

If you read the first two entries in this series, you already know the airport story. I was supposed to fly to Las Vegas. Instead, I fainted, ended up in the ER, was Life Flighted to Baptist Jacksonville, and got a pacemaker. I do not need to keep retelling that part every time. The larger question now is more useful.

What have I been calling normal because I forgot what better felt like? That question has been following me around. I had become used to standing up carefully. I had become used to feeling lightheaded. I had become used to having less energy. I had become used to wondering if I might get dizzy. I had become used to a smaller physical life.

Not all at once. That is the sneaky part. If life shrinks all at once, we usually notice. If it shrinks by inches, we adapt. We rearrange. We compensate. We call it wisdom, age, stress, responsibility, or “just how things are right now.” Little reductions can become normal before we realize we are living inside them.

Functional Is Not Fine

This is where high-functioning people can fool themselves. If you can still answer the email, hold the meeting, serve the client, make dinner, pay the bill, and look reasonably normal from the outside, it is easy to assume the system is still working. But a person can keep functioning long after they have started losing capacity, tenderness, clarity, energy, or peace. Being able to keep going does not automatically mean the way you are going is sustainable.

After nearly three decades of working with people, I have seen this pattern too many times to ignore. People often wait until something breaks before they admit something was overloaded. The body finally speaks. The marriage finally cracks. The business finally stops feeling worth it. The anxiety finally becomes impossible to manage. The resentment finally comes out sideways. Crisis often says out loud what we kept trying to manage quietly.

When Strength Becomes a Trap

There is also a reward system around reduced capacity, especially for achievers and helpers. People praise you for pushing through. They admire your dedication. They thank you for being reliable. They count on you because you always make it work. You become the strong one, the useful one, the capable one, the one who does not fall apart.

That sounds flattering until it becomes a trap. Because once people are used to you over-functioning, your limits can feel like betrayal. Not just to them. To you. Rest feels irresponsible. Asking for help feels dramatic. Changing the plan feels weak. Saying no feels selfish. Being honest about your capacity feels like you are disappointing the identity you have built.

Sometimes the applause for our strength makes it harder to admit we are tired.

And yes, I know that identity well. I like being useful. I like being prepared. I like doing what I said I would do. I like helping people. And I still like looking good while doing it. Let’s not pretend healing requires bad lighting. But identity can become expensive when it teaches us to ignore the places where life is asking for care.

Business Can Normalize Abnormal Too

This is especially relevant for people building something. A business can train you to tolerate abnormal. At first, everything is a season. The launch season. The growth season. The survival season. The rebuilding season. The “just until this stabilizes” season.

Sometimes that is true. Businesses do have seasons. But if every season requires you to abandon your peace, your body, your relationships, and your capacity, it may not be a season anymore. It may be the structure.

That matters because structure beats intention. You can intend to rest, but if the business requires your constant over-functioning, your intention will lose. You can intend to be present with your family, but if your calendar has no margin, presence becomes a theory. You can intend to lead with peace, but if every decision is reactive, peace becomes branding.

A life cannot outgrow the systems that keep shrinking it.

The invitation is not to burn it all down. I am not writing this from my couch with a pacemaker telling everyone to quit their jobs and move to a monastery with questionable Wi-Fi. The invitation is more practical than that.

Look at what your life is teaching you to normalize.

Look at what your business rewards.

Look at what your body keeps asking for.

Look at what your relationships have stopped expecting.

You do not have to destroy your life to redesign the parts that are draining it.

Better, Not Perfect

So maybe this is worth asking gently: What would better feel like? Not perfect. Better. More peaceful. More honest. More spacious. More alive. More connected. More sustainable. More aligned with the person you say you want to become.

Sometimes when people finally experience peace, they realize how anxious they were. When they experience respect, they realize how much they had tolerated. When they experience rest, they realize how exhausted they had become. When they experience clarity, they realize how foggy life had been.

Healing can feel startling because it exposes what survival made familiar.

That is happening for me physically right now. The dizziness is gone. The blacking-out sensations are gone. My pulse is steady. I am still recovering, still tired, still healing from the procedure, still emotionally working through what it means to have a device in my chest. But I am also wondering how much capacity had been missing. And how long I had been organizing life around the absence of it.

The PEACE Path Connection

That is the kind of work I help people do in the PEACE Path. We look at what has become normal, what it is costing you, what reality is trying to show you, and what choices would move you toward more peace, clarity, and capacity.

Peace is not just a feeling. It is a way of telling the truth sooner.

If this stirs something in you about what you have normalized, what you are pushing through, or where your life has become smaller than it needs to be, hit reply and tell me what part landed. I read those messages.

And if you want help working through your own version of this, ask me about the PEACE Path. We can talk about what it would look like to stop managing the reduced version and begin moving toward something more honest and alive.

The Flight I Never Boarded Series

1. The Flight I Never Boarded
   www.caseycolecorbin.com/blog/flight-i-never-boarded

2. A Pulse of 20 and the Stories We Tell Ourselves
   www.caseycolecorbin.com/blog/pulse-of-20

3. When Abnormal Becomes Normal
   www.caseycolecorbin.com/blog/when-abnormal-becomes-normal

4. Near Death, but Not Afraid
   www.caseycolecorbin.com/blog/near-death-not-afraid

5. The Talk I Didn’t Give
   www.caseycolecorbin.com/blog/the-talk-i-didnt-give

6. Becoming a Cyborg
   www.caseycolecorbin.com/blog/becoming-a-cyborg

7. What Survival Is For
   www.caseycolecorbin.com/blog/what-survival-is-for

Hit REPLY and let's chat!

-Casey