No Fun

It’s been quiet around this blog for a couple of months. That’s never a good thing.

It’s been a tough winter for me because I’ve been dealing with some mysterious health issues.

In December I started feeling light-headed and I had a slight ache in my chest. After a week or two, I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I finally saw a doctor. He took a chest X-ray and an EKG. Upon seeing the EKG results, he immediately gave me a nitroglycerin tablet (not a good sign) and told me to head directly to the Emergency Room (also not a good sign).

[ FYI, if you ever need to bypass waiting your turn in the ER, the secret password is “chest pain.” Man as soon as you say those words, the seas part and you are in a room in about three seconds. I didn’t even have time to fill out paperwork. ]

In the emergency room, they did another EKG. As soon as the technician was done, he quickly pulled all the wires off my body and scurried out of the room. Immediately the room flooded with a half-dozen nurses who, without saying a word, raced to hook me up to more wires, and an IV, and even put defibrillator pads on my chest. I sat there in stunned silence. What the hell was going on?

Eventually we (fortunately Linda was there with me) figured out which one of these very concerned and focused workers was the doctor and asked her to explain the madness.

“Your EKG indicates you are having a heart attack,” was the very grim response.

Ummm, what!?! I was fairly certain that I was not in the middle of a heart attack, but just hearing those words was almost enough to cause one.

Over the next 20 hours I was subjected to a echocardiogram, many blood tests, a Cardiac Catheterization (where they basically stick a tube into the femoral artery, then guide it into the heart so they can look for heart disease – yikes!), and an overnight in the Intensive Care Unit.

Have you ever tried to sleep in a hospital when they have you hooked up to a pulse monitor? The damn thing is programmed to sound an alarm whenever the person’s heart rate goes below 50 beats per minute. If you are an athlete, that thing is going to be ringing like a call center in India! Eventually the nurse got sick of turning off my alarm, and she lowered the alarm threshold to 40 bpm. Apparently when I sleep my heart rate is about 38 bpm, which meant I spent the whole night dozing off, only to be jolted back awake every time I started sleeping soundly. Yeah, that was fun.

Anyway, I was sent home the next day after they were fairly certain I was in no immediate danger. In the two months since, the symptoms haven’t really changed. I have had many more doctors visits, and more tests, and still don’t know what is wrong. We’ve discussed many, many possible causes with the doctor. Everything from a virus or stress to a brain tumor or cancer. It’s been scary and stressful.

I’ve spent the past two months being really cautious with my exertion levels. But recently I’ve done a few harder workouts and it appears that the symptoms are not at all affected by exercise. In fact, I often feel better after a workout, for the same reasons almost everyone feels better after a workout.

So the current status is this: I still have a really bad looking EKG and minor chest pains. I am still worried and scared and pursuing a medical diagnosis. But I can no longer sit around hoping to feel better. I’m only making it worse by obsessing about it. I’ve got to get back to doing the things I love.

Here’s to hoping this blog won’t be silent much longer.