If you completed the heading above with the words "...a heart attack", congratulations. You now know the topic of this here post.

As in, I had one. A minor one, but as I'll explain, it could have been much worse.

It was about three weeks ago, on a Wednesday night. I lay down in bed, put my head on the pillow,....and felt my nasal passages closing. I honest-to-God could not breathe. I sat upright immediately, took a moment to try to calm down, lay my head down again, and....the same thing happened. As this was going on, my heart rate went ballistic and I was sweating gallons.

Finally, I woke my Wunnerful Wifee and, not knowing what else to do, asked to be taken to the emergency room. Because of my past history with anxiety issues, I believed what was happening to me was the result of a panic attack. I thought I would be prescribed some kind of medication to help me calm down and I would be on my merry way back home, grabbing a bit of sleep before heading to work with the intention of making up lost nap-time later.

Wrong. Not even close.

While lying down in the E.R., an electrocardiogram was taken, and it was determined by the doctor that something concerning my heart was seriously out of whack. Before I knew it, I was whisked upstairs to the fourth floor, to the cardio unit. There, I was hooked up to a heart monitor and given nitroglycerin and Heparin (a blood thinner) intravenously. There I remained for four days, before being discharged on a Sunday morning.

I'm going to cover the rest of the story in subsequent posts. Before signing off, I'm going to mention what I feel were the two biggest contributing factors.

First, my lifelong love affair with junk food is going to have to end. Now that I've begun watching my diet and started rehab activities at the hospital, my weight is gradually going down from a peak of 280 pounds. I'm six feet in height and I will turn (God willing) 45 in July. I will leave the math up to you, dear readers.

Second, a sleep study taken about two weeks after my release from the hospital confirmed something my wife and I suspected for quite some time:  I was diagnosed with severe sleep apnea, which means I stop breathing several times during sleep. My brain was receiving only 74 percent of the oxygen required to keep operating.

I'm physically all right, for the most part. Psychologically, I feel like I hit a brick wall after running at full speed, and I'm still in the process of getting up, dusting myself off, and trying to figure out just what the hell happened.

Until next time, carbon-based bipeds....

Peace.

 

Tags: health
Current Mood: drained