Well...I thought I was going to die.
Not hyperbole.
I woke up at 1:30 am and I felt a burning sensation in my chest. It was more disconcerting than alarming, though. It was uncomfortable enough that I got up out of bed, and when I did, my heart starting beating pretty hard. Which was weird. I was in good shape...had been exercising 90 minutes to two hours just about every day for the past two years...and had lost a massive amount of weight (90 pounds was the low adipose tissue mark)...some of which I had found again when weighing and counting and not drinking and exercise injuries piled up on me, but I was still way less fat than I'd been for a long time. And I'd never had any hint of heart trouble before. But it concerned me enough that I decided to drive to the emergency room to have it checked out. The whole time I was thinking, "This is just silly, an over-reaction on my part. They're probably going to tell me that I'm having an anxiety attack and that I should go home, drink green tea, and meditate." But as I got nearer to the hospital, I started feeling worse. (Which is, of course, why you should never drive yourself to the emergency room.) When I got there, I parked, got out of the car, and then my heart really started beating out of me. I felt so awful that I was seriously doubting my ability to walk the forty steps to the door. I made it in...and they immediately were on me. They clocked my heart at over 150 beats per minute...which is at the maximum heart rate for my age. They got me into a wheelchair and back into an ER cubicle, then put a nitroglycerin tablet under my tongue.
My heart rate immediately plunged to under 30 beats per minute.
And everything went black. Sweat poured out of my body. I felt like I was going to throw up my internal organs. And I really truly, for the first time in my life, thought that I was going to die. (If I had died, my last thought on this earth would have been for my kids, which is kind of nice to know.)
Needless to say, this traveler returned from That Country.
Fast forward: they looked into my heart and saw that part of it had been severely weakened. They said it was at 35% strength, and that when my heart beat it was unable to squeeze all of the blood that needed to get out out, so it had begun backing up into my body. Which explains why in the ER my breathing was getting bubbly and I was tasting something coppery.
The good news was that they didn't see any blockage per se, left no stents behind, and said that there didn't seem to be any permanent damage.
They hypothesized that I had contracted an asymptomatic virus which had attacked my heart and taken me down. What could I have done to prevent it? Nothing.
It was just a crap shoot kind of thing.
That, my friends, is an extremely humbling thought. One day you're fine, walking four or five miles, the next day you're lying in the ER with 65% of your heart's strength gone. Or you're dead in your bed because you didn't think that burn-y pain was anything to be too concerned about.
And it just seemed to come out of the blue, you know?
However....
There were some signs. I just didn't know that they were warning signs. I thought they were "you're an old man" signs.
I am hesitant to go full disclosure on this, as I fear that any semi-intelligent human being would have sought medical help long before this 🖤 thing reached the crisis point...and I fear that going into the nitty gritty details will reveal me to be a foolish person. But, on the other hand, I've read a lot of stories of late about people younger than I am dying suddenly of heart problems...which makes me feel compelled to offer this up as a public service message. Just in case.
So...here ya go.
As previously noted, I've been working out just about every day for the past two years. My main form of exercise has been riding my stationary bike (one hour, usually broken up in 15 minute increments with weight exercises in-between) or walking (usually four miles, sometimes a bit more). A couple of months ago I started noticing a tightness in my chest when I first started exercising. It wasn't really painful per se, and if I kept going it went away. I also found that if I paused for a few minutes it would stop. When it happened while I was walking, I would usually find that I needed to burp. So I thought it was probably either a product of my not warming up properly or my just having a little indigestion. It didn't stop me from doing my full exercise routine.
But it seemed to get worse. I especially noticed this when I was out walking. Sometimes when I was with Jacqueline I would have to stop and rest for a few minutes before I could get going again. But Jacqueline is a really fast walker, so again it seemed to fit in with my Not Properly Warming Up paradigm.
But I'm old...so I started to worry. And on a Thursday morning I called my doctor and made an appointment to see him on Monday. I actually made the appointment while I was out on a walk. Which turned out to be my last long walk for three weeks. Because that night, I was awakened at 1:30 a.m. with a burning feeling in my chest....
It's been 3 1/2 weeks since my ER visit now, and it has been a really hard stretch of time. Physically I've felt really lousy, and have been unable to exert myself for any appreciable amount of time. And I've been more seriously depressed than at any other time in my life. The randomness of it all...it makes my life seem like a petty and fragile and insubstantial thing. And a thing of little worth.
That's not easy to deal with.
But yesterday I stuck my courage to the sticking place and went for a one mile walk.
And it was hard, but I didn't suffer any ill effects. So today I went out for a 1.4 mile walk. And? So far so good.
I read A History of Philosophy in ten page a day increments.
I read every one of Edgar Rice Burroughs's 84 books...over half of them out loud. 1
I read all of Remembrance of Things Past, Finnegans Wake, The Sea of Fertility tetralogy, The Bible, and a bunch of other books out loud.
I lost 90 pounds.
I can do this, too. A little bit at a time.
And after my 1.4 mile walk today, I actually felt good for a little while.
Maybe I can even convince myself to get back to work on ...Then There Is No Mountain. Time will tell. (And so will I.)
1 Okay, full disclosure: I have one book to go, so this announcement is a little bit premature...but barring heart failure, I will have accomplished this in another month or two at most.
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