I've never written a post like this one. I've never had to.
Thursday night, at approximately 10:30 pm, I experienced severe chest pains. They lasted somewhere between 1 to 2 minutes in duration. Immediately as the pains settled I began to shake uncontrollably, as if the room were very, very cold. After several moments of this my wife asked me if I felt like going to the emergency room. I don't like hospitals in general, so I told her I'd try and ride it out. But it did not subside, so she took me to the er. They laid me out on the table and I still could not control the shakes, though they didn't seem to be quite as intense as they initially were.
I honestly thought I had experienced a "light" heart attack. The pain was so bad...the nurse asked me, on a scale from one to ten, one being the least and 10 being the most pain I had ever experienced in my life. I didn't have to think very long...it was 10. They took my vitals, gave me oxygen, put me on a heart monitor and took a couple of EKGs. It had to have been an hour before the shakes subsided, and then I felt pretty damn weak.
The doctor told me I had high blood pressure, GERT, acid reflux and angina. He also said that the fat levels in my blood were extraordinarilly high. He made me stay in the hospital overnight, so they could do a couple more tests. I was there until 3:00 pm the next day when they released me. I was given 3 prescriptions and ordered to get a referral for a cardiologist. He also said I would have to go on a low fat, low sodium diet. I thought that all sucked pretty bad, but at least it wasn't an MI or congestive heart failure (thank god).
I began to feel a bit better throughout the next day. Then something happened that really threw me for a loop...
It was at 10:30 pm (just as the heart issue had been on the previous day). I was lying in bed, listening to my XM radio through the headphones, as is my nightly routine. I sat up on the side of the bed, needing to go to the restroom, I kind of looked straight ahead, at the light on my stereo...then, it sounds weird, but I felt the depression I've suffered, basically all my life, seem to slowly break up and dissipate. It was really confusing, and I feared that I was coming into the initial phases of a manic episode. I had grown so accustomed to the effects of depression--the anger, the underlying hopelessness, the cynicism, the inability to enjoy things I know I like--that I had forgotten what it was like to be in the "normal zone", and so I got kind of rattled.
I went to the restroom, sat down, but all I could do was think about what was happening, what it might be. I don't want to go into it here, but I came to a few conclusions that I can only hope are correct. I don't want to think about the possibly that it's just a break from depression, that I'll sink back into it because of my condition, that it's nothing more than the fulcrum of a mood swing. But just thinking of it that way brings me down and discourages me. So now that I'm in this place I am determined to be vigilant, to consciously and continuously keep my attitude in check, to try and appreciate everything and everyone around me like I've been unable to, or more correctly, afraid to throughout my life (well, not ALL my life, but a significant portion of it).
Over the last few days I've put a lot of thought into WHY my attitudes and personality are the way they are. I think I have learned a lot, that I've correctly made the connections between the events in my life and their effects on me. No doubt there is a lot more work to be done in that respect, but I'm feeling very good about it.
Not so much the physical condition. Maybe it's the shock of switching from an unhealthy diet to the low sugar/low sodium that has me feeling a little weak. It was pretty easy to think that might be the culprit until last night, when I experienced the shakes again. Not the heart pain, though I did have some pain in my back, which typically happens when the chest pains begin...(yes, this has happened on a few occassions in the past, but the pains were not QUITE as severe and there was no shaking, so I figured it was just gas pressure or something like that). So that was a little disconcerting.
I'm not really sure how serious all this is, as I tend to live in denial about these kinds of things. But it IS a serious concern. The thing I worry about the most are the fat levels in the blood, which are unusual. My father passed away as a result of "bad blood" (and a blood clot), so to contemplate that is very, very sobering.
I am doing well in sticking to the new diet, and I hope I can also hold on to the positive changes that seem to have happened to my mental/emotional state. I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts, that's for sure.
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