SICK LIT MAGAZINE

This editorial not only comes from my heart but is also about my heart. I am going to tell you a story. I hope you can hang with me until the end.

The word on the street is that a lot of people are going through some of their toughest times right now – but I want you to know that it will pass.

I know that the magazine has been labeled “defunct,” and that I haven’t exactly, well, been here. I need to address that elephant in the room. There have been a lot of false starts. There have been many attempts (by myself) to hit the ground running again with SLM, only to be thwarted by my declining health, or simply the circumstances of my life, in which I was simply unable to devote any time to my readers, my writers, and my audience. I was not able to actually follow through with any commitment to relaunching the web site, truly reopening submissions, or even resting properly, and taking care of myself.

For that, I sincerely apologize.

I need you to know that I haven’t just been sick: I am lucky to be alive. I’ve been revived many times, flatlined many times, and it all ended with heart surgery over the summer. If you are saying, “WHAAAAT??”, please keep reading.

Things are different now, however, and I will tell you why: I was diagnosed with a rare but lethal heart condition that plagued me this past year and a half, and if I’m being truthful with myself, years and years before as well, called AV Node Reentrant Supraventricular Tachycardia. Let me break it down: I was born with a faulty pathway in my heart. This faulty pathway interfered with my normal heart rhythm; it replaced the normal pathway that the heart uses for the lower chambers to communicate with the upper chambers. The faulty pathway sends the heart into a severe, abnormally fast bout of tachycardia that can only be stopped by intervention from emergency medical services.

Kelly, what are you talking about? What does this have to do with the magazine? What does it have to do with submissions?

I promise you; I am getting to it. This heart issue that I had, however, is incredibly nuanced and requires a lengthy explanation.

Tachycardia, beating of the heart that is incredibly rapid, over 100 bpm (a resting heart rate is around 60 – 80 bpm), is exhausting to the body in and of itself.

The type of SVT (Supraventricular Tachycardia) that I had, however, was not only terrifying, but it killed me every time I went into an episode. Each time it happened, my heart rate skyrocketed to 230 bpm, 240 bpm, and even 250 bpm. So, my heart was running fifty marathons, leaving me behind with extreme exhaustion, doctors who told me nothing was wrong with me, and it took dying in an ambulance the summer before last for anyone to listen to me and finally refer me to the right type of doctor.

No one…and I truly believe this…no one is so exhausted that they will fall asleep on a Friday evening, only to wake up on SUNDAY morning, without a serious underlying medical condition.

I had been so gaslit by the medical community about what I was and had been experiencing, however, that I waited to call the ambulance when my heart went into extreme tachycardia mid-summer in 2024. I made sure I was tachycardic for about 45 minutes with no sign of it stopping before I would call for emergency services. Why? Because years back, I went into an eerily similar episode of tachycardia, only for it to stop before the paramedics arrived at my house. They were irked and were tight-lipped the entire ambulance ride. They told me there was nothing wrong with my heart.

So, when my heart did this again that summer in 2024, I thought it would be just like it was years ago when I was told I was just, well, crazy. Aside from making the poor decision to wait 45 minutes to call the ambulance, I was certain something was wrong with my heart this time and practically jumped on the gurney. At first, they were quick to ask me if I had taken any drugs, asking me how I knew there was something wrong with my heart, wasting the precious little time I had left before cardiac arrest was imminent, before they hooked me up to their equipment.

This is a recap of the events that ensued: their eyes got wide, and they went into a PANIC. My heart was in the 240s and 250s, sort of hovering around that range, and as they saw that, they knew how wrong they were in their initial “diag-nonsense.” They moved so quickly that I couldn’t keep track. I probably also couldn’t keep track of what was happening because I was slowly suffocating to death. They began to scramble, grabbing vials of medications, syringes, blood pressure cuffs, stickers for the EKG, even charging the defibrillator, saying that my heart rate was so fast that they were having doubts that the adenosine (a medication that is injected in your upper arm/shoulder, an AV node disruptor, that stops your heart) would actually work. They said they needed to reset my heart and gave me their diagnosis of SVT.

Here is what I do know from my experiences: Death does not discriminate. Life is precious. It is a gift that doesn’t often feel like one, but being alive is its own miracle. And make no mistake, death comes for us all.

“Resetting the heart” is an EMT / medic’s way of saying that they had to kill me. Every time I went into tachycardia, I was killed and then revived.

This first time that I flatlined, I felt the dead weight of my body sink into the cheap medical bedding. Everything went dark. At first, I was able to watch what was happening from outside my body, looking down at the three of us: the brand-new EMT trainee from Australia, the second, seasoned medic from Texas, as they watched the heart monitor diligently, and me, as I lay there, motionless.

From there, I went to a place. My mind, my soul, my essence, left my body and went to an oddly shaped geometric waiting room where colors were off and structures did not look correct. I was spinning around in that space, wondering if I could recall memories in this strange-afterlife-waiting-room. It was as though I was shouting into a void and there was an echo. I felt this otherworldly childlike happiness. “Ooh,” I remember thinking. “The Hail Mary. If I can remember that here, won’t that be something? Let’s see if I know it. Hail Mary, full of grace, the lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us now and at the hour of our death, Amen. Haha!” I shouted with glee. “I did it!”

Then, I was jolted back into my body. The two EMTs hovered over me, wide-eyed, full of questions. I was confused, covered in tears, sweat, rattled, and in a ton of pain. “I—I need to call my dad! I need to talk to my dad! I want my dad!” was all I could blurt out as I sobbed. “I feel like I’m on fire,” I groaned, still crying.

Death is easy. Death is calm. Death is peaceful. It is living that is painful. It is living that brings us sorrow and frustration, facing us with obstacle after obstacle. But death? Why did everyone fear it so much? I had never felt so at peace. I had never felt so happy. As my grandma says and has said, “Kelly, God is not finished with you yet.” And I guess she is right.

My time at the hospital and directly afterward was all a blur, time moving strangely, as I was asked by everyone working in the hospital what it was like to die. The EMTs asked me, the nurse asked, and then the 80,000-year-old curmudgeon of a physician asked me what it was like, expression deadpan, eager for a response.

“Well, it was calm. I felt heavy…like I sort of sank into the bed in the ambulance. Then I felt at peace.”

This response baffled everyone. It was the first time they had ever heard of anyone being given adenosine and NOT experiencing a sense of intense dread, of impending doom. All I could do was to shrug my shoulders and tell them that that was not my experience. I spent the next three weeks completely exhausted, basically bed-ridden, and sleeping constantly.

I did get to the cardiologist soon after this and was given a heart monitor to wear and a weird phone that was connected to it that I would press each time anything happened. So, I was given the diagnosis of sinus tachycardia and supraventricular tachycardia. I was put on medication and told that I needed to see an electrophysiologist cardiologist because my heart problem wasn’t one that a normal cardiologist dealt with. He told me to think of the heart as a house; that he was the plumber, and the other doctor was the electrician. And I, as it turned out, had a major electrical issue that needed fixing.

As a teacher, however, my ability to take off and go to doctor’s appointments quickly vanished as the school year started back. I grew more and more weary, more exhausted, more run down than ever, and got sick constantly. I missed more and more days, causing my experience at work to become stressful, putting more and more pressure on my already failing heart. It ended with my taking a leave of absence, followed almost a week later, in April of 2025, by a medical emergency I was ill-prepared for.

I was on the verge of cardiac arrest in the living room of my own home, terrified, alone, and blaming myself for all of it. When you’ve been unable to take care of yourself or even understand what is happening with your body, you lose any sense of control you might have had. Your confidence gets absolutely disintegrated. Nothing actually made sense to me until I went to see my heart surgeon for the pre-op appointment. I had no idea that my SVT was what made me feel so terrible all the time.

In April of 2025, as I wrote about earlier, I was in tachycardia for too long by myself, and I am only alive because of my will to hold on. My sheer will. That is how I made it. I was dying. I could not breathe. I went into hypoxia and lost a ton of oxygen to my brain. I could not control my bodily movements, and I did not know what was going on. I just remember hitting my couch like a sack of potatoes when I flatlined, and I felt so, so at peace, once again. After that, my EKGs were insane looking – imagine Harold from the children’s book series Harold and the Purple Crayon using street drugs, then drawing random lines. That’s what they looked like. I needed surgery. Badly.

At the very end of June, over this past summer of 2025, I had my heart surgery. My surgeon was able to ablate my genetic anomaly and cure me. Before we all get too excited, it’s important to know that it takes the body months to truly heal from ablations. The heart has been burned, and it doesn’t get open air. So, it’s sealed up in there trying to heal from cells being burned off of it.

Life is not supposed to be simple. It does not come with a step-by-step instruction booklet. Things have been tumultuous at best, but I am working every day to be better to myself so I can be better for the people around me. Life isn’t about “finding yourself,” but building yourself.

I have changed a lot as a person in these past few years. And then changed even more after the surgery. I listen to music that I would have never listened to before – I have always loved hard rock, but this is beyond that. I even went to my favorite band’s concert recently and the openers were even harder than the headliner I was there to see, and I loved every minute. Let me put it this way: I listen to music that used to scare me. Karaoke is now me and some guy with a shaved head and face tattoos singing a duet. I listen to actual metal now.

I have digressed.

However, I hope you can now understand and appreciate the circumstances that were beyond my control that kept me from running this magazine. I never knew it wasn’t normal to get sick all the time. Or crawl into bed right after the workday was done. Or sleep until 5pm – or sleep through an entire day.

I’m still on the road of recovery…but maybe you can help me get my island of misfit stories back up and running.

I want to get your ideas for themes we can all write to for the fall and beyond. Let’s find our community once again and share what writing we can. I know how hard it is to create when you are burnt out, exhausted, and recovering from emotional distress. Just know that I’m right here with you. I’m not just your editor, but your biggest fan, and your cheerleader. I would not have a literary magazine without YOUR VOICE.

MY ASK: Throw out theme ideas, writing prompts, and everything and anything you can think of. Don’t censor yourself. Don’t say that you can’t. I not only won’t believe it, but I know that you won’t write because you’re so plagued by everything around you, you’re censoring yourself, and you’re overthinking. USE everything around you that’s plaguing you. USE it to fuel your creativity. When you name themes and theme ideas, I will name that theme after you just like I did back in 2015 and 2016.

As your publisher, your advocate, and let’s figuratively say your epic hero, this is OUR official call to adventure, as we’ve been teaching with Beowulf (I teach English 3 and 4). Your call to adventure from me is to share your themes, theme ideas, and let’s create something new, something beautiful, something that we can all be proud of in these tumultuous, uncertain, and, quite often, harrowing times. Let’s turn our suffering and our pain, misfortune, sorrow, even joy, into art.

As the wise Tupac Shakur wrote in his poem Ambition Over Adversity, let’s turn that pain and that misfortune into something. Something we can believe in and get behind. Let’s “blossom into wealth.”

I’ve stared death in the face. And I basically tried to give it a hug. I fear nothing and I fear no one. Because this is all just life. We are here to learn.

I am incredibly excited to read your work, as I have been on an SLM hiatus for a long time now.

It’s time to make some waves.

Let’s give ’em hell, guys.

Life is a journey full of unexpectedness, ups, downs, more downs, rock bottoms, then rock bottom’s basement. And that’s okay. Because although I saw rock bottom’s basement, this means that there is an exit door, leading to a reality that I can not only manage, but a reality that is peaceful, fulfilling, and one that sees me for who I really am.

That means there’s a reality like that waiting for you as well.

My last question is: Are you with me?

Peace and love to you as always,

Your forever faithful Editor-in-Chief,

Kelly M. Fitzharris (Obviously this is my maiden name as a pseudonym ;))

PS: If you have work that’s ready to go without a theme, send it! What are you waiting for?

Pictures from the Bring Me the Horizon concert I went to on September 27th, 2025, in Dallas, at the American Airlines Center. It was an amazing night.