For Your Health! (part 1)

Some good advice:



So I'll give some background on my health, an issue that is ongoing. This will either serve as a cool "cautionary tale," an entertaining anecdote about me overreacting to a health scare. Either way, I think it'll be good reading.

Here's the scoop: I've not been feeling well for a while now...dating back to, probably, somewhere in early 2011. There was nothing specific about my ill health -- it felt like a string of colds, punctuated with bouts of "a bad cold." It felt like I was always "kind of sick" in one way or the other, for several months.

I did regular check-ups with my doctor (well...one regular check-up sometime in 2011) as well as several "Hey-is-this-normal-to-be-feeling-like-this" visits. Every time I got a clean bill of health, the worst critique being "you ought to lose a little weight."

And honestly, the constant sickness has never been really debilitating. More like a persistent, irritating cold that came and went. I honestly don't know whether or not this has contributed in any way to my current condition, or if it's just a coincidence. I just thought I should put that out there, just in case.

But I'm relatively young, and relatively active. I don't have any unhealthy habits, and my family has a pretty good history of longevity. Even if I was concerned (as my multiple unscheduled visits to my doctor will attest), I never thought it was anything serious.

Until things got serious.

When I was flying back to Los Angeles after visiting Seattle for Christmas, something happened. Something really shitty.

It's hard to explain, but I felt an odd sensation in my chest (kind of a gripping, or a bump, or thump, or something) followed by a very rapid heart beat, an inability to catch my breath, and a sense that I was probably going to die. Soon.

I took some deep breaths, tried to get comfortable, and kept telling myself, "Calm the fuck down." I wondered what a plane did if a passenger went into cardiac arrest on a flight.

Eventually, my heart stopped racing, and the pain went away. Not entirely, of course, but close enough.

I didn't quite know what to think of that...but it was in the back of my mind. I assumed that I just freaked out, and something to do with the altitude screwed with my biology.

When I was home alone in Los Angeles (my wife was in Idaho with her family) it happened again.

"Shit," I thought. "I'm going to die alone. Fuck."

Eventually, that second spell went away too...but I decided that I needed to get it looked at. So I threw on a jacket and went to the emergency room.

"Chest pain" and "shortness of breath" are a pretty quick ticket inside the ER, and I was promptly processed, tested, x-rayed, and shown to my room.

After a while, I started to feel better...which made me feel a little stupid. The staff was very nice, but the doctor came in and assured me that everything came back clean. In the end, he hinted that I might want to consider seeing a psychologist, and told me to follow up with my doctor within two days.

I looked up "Panic Attacks" when I got home, read the symptoms, and just started laughing. It was describing my "spell" exactly.

"Whew," I probably didn't say.

So I did a bunch of research on panic attacks. It's not a life-threatening condition, but it does require treatment. I figured I'd just go ahead and take care of it after the New Year.

And the New Year came and went without a relapse. I didn't have any more episodes, and I figured that it must have been an overreaction.

A couple of days after we returned from our New Years trip in Idaho, I got another one. This one woke me up.

"Fuck," I probably said. "I can't be panicked when I sleep. Why did this happened?"

So I Googled it. Yep. No problem. Panic attacks "can occur at any time, even during sleep."

Once again, I was placated. I slept again, Googled more ways to fight my panic attacks, and put "doctor's appointment" on my to-do list.

I had one or two more attacks. They were irritating, but I was able to function fine. I convinced myself that I just needed to "zen" my way through an attack.

Last weekend, my wife and I were given a rare "Child-free Weekend Day," and we used the time to go out to breakfast and take a walk.

I felt shitty the whole time...not because of the exquisite company, but because something was just not right inside of me. I couldn't put my finger on it...but stuff just felt off, and there was this vague, continuous, dull pressure (and sometime pain) in the center of my chest that would just not go away, and I couldn't get comfortable.

I let it go, and resolved to see my doctor first thing on Monday. Things seemed to be ramping up, and it stopped fitting the profile of "panic attacks" in my head.

Ironically, this dawning realization made me panic a little bit.

Last Sunday (the 22nd) I started my annual training for the Glendale Downtown Dash. Since tearing my calf muscle back in November, I'd been horribly inactive. The thought of training and running was daunting...but I thought it'd be a good way to start to try to eventually sort of possibly maybe somehow get back into shape.

My run started off pretty good. I was pushing our jogging stroller, and Henry seemed to be enjoying himself (I was worried that he'd find running as boring as I do).

About seven minutes into this, it happened again...oh boy did it happen.

Wham!

My heart fell like a stone (or cinched up like a trash bag, or seized like an FBI), and my body went numb. I tried to breathe, but I could only pant. I looked behind me -- there was another running group back there, and I was hoping that one of them knew CPR in case my little ticker stopped ticking.

My heart started racing...which I suppose is better than "stopping" altogether. I started walking slowly...taking deep breaths, and trying to not pass out. Eventually, my heart returned to its normal pace, but that pain in my chest lingered.

I got back to car and called my doctor's office, and spoke to the "on-call" physician. I explained my symptoms, and he assured me that it probably wasn't my heart, because I was too young, or something. I asked him if I should go to the emergency room, and he said I probably didn't need to.

I tried to "sell" my symptoms to him, even fibbing at times to make them appear worse...but he did not seem concerned. My confidence in his ability to diagnose the issue was pretty low.

I thanked him and hung up the phone.

I was wrecked with dread for the entire rest of the day, and on through the evening. I tried to savor every moment with my wife, child, and friends...just in case that moment happened to be my last.

Needless to say, I did not sleep well.

The chest pain was still there on Monday morning. It was more dull and abstract, but it was there none-the-less.

I got an early appointment with my doctor. I described my symptoms, and he assured me that I'm outside of the "heart attack" range ("I've never seen a 32 year old have a heart attack," is my paraphrase of his reassurance).

However, he said it did sound a lot like an arrhythmia. This is a broad diagnosis that ranges from "relatively minor and treatable," to "dangerous and deadly," though my doctor seemed to think it was "atrial" than "ventricular" (atrial is generally preferable...from what I've read).

Personally, I'm rooting for paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia, because it's got a cool-sounding name, a handy acronym (PSVT), I can control it myself using a cool thing called the Valsalva Maneuver, it's treatable, and it's "generally not life threatening." But I'm also okay with "There's nothing wrong with you at all LOL!"

My doctor told me that I'd have a referral to a cardiologist in the mail "ASAP."

Ah...the glories of the HMO.

Today I finally got my referral, and have an appointment for tomorrow at 9. I hope I do well.

Of course, this could either be the conclusion, or just the beginning (hence, the open-ended "part 1" in the title). Arrhythmia could be the disease, or just a symptom. I could have a little flutter that can be controlled, or I could require a heart transplant (which means I'm in the right place -- our local hospital, Cedars-Sinai, is ranked first nationally).

Either way, there are lots of treatments available, and since heart disease is so bad (it's the leading cause of death in the US) there has been a crap-load of research, and many new innovative treatments.

Which is my way of saying, I'm in good hands...and I even have insurance this time! If this had happened three years ago, I would have been screwed. FIGURATIVELY! (I'm trying to start using that in the way that people misuse "literally"...as you can see, it's not going well so far).

I'll keep you posted. I know that I've obsessed with death a bit in this space...so I'll try my damnedest to keep things positive. But you know me. I write what I'm feeling...and if I receive shitty news, you can expect things to get very uncomfortable in this blog space. Sorry, but that's how it goes.

So enjoy! And thanks for reading!

(part 2 here)

More Ruminations on Death and Dying

Warning: This post is going to get a little macabre, and probably pretty self-indulgent. I apologize, but it's my damn blog, so I do what I want with it.

Also, Erika...you probably shouldn't read this. Just trust me.

I'm sitting at my desk. It's 1:45 PM, and I've just finished my Lean Cuisine -- Chicken in Peanut Sauce. I'm watching an episode of Grey's Anatomy, hunched over my keyboard with my feet folded underneath my chair.

I've had a pretty bad headache all day, probably from stress or dehydration. I take two Tylenol every couple of hours, and that's helped me get through the day.

I cough involuntarily, and notice that my heart is racing. I lean back in my chair and take a couple of deep breaths. My heart is still racing. I loosen my belt and take a drink of water. Something clicks in my head, and I hear a buzzing noise and the pain in my head goes from "irritating" to "debilitating." Suddenly I can't focus on the screen in front of me, and I try to just focus on breathing as I slump back in my chair. Sounds are echoing in my head, distantly.

I try to lift my hand to the phone, but my arm won't move. I'm still breathing, but I can't see anything -- my field of view is now just a blurry dot in the center of my vision. I need to make noise, so I try. I moan, grunt, sigh, anything to catch my coworkers' attention. Hopefully they'll see my unconscious body and come to my aid. Shouldn't be long -- people walk by my cubicle all the time.

I have a lot of thoughts racing through my head. Is this a panic attack? Am I having a stroke? Is this going to cost a lot of money? Will my brain ever work the same?

Will I survive?

Unfortunately, I've had a brain aneurysm.

My coworkers find me and I'm taken to the hospital, which is just a couple of blocks away. I survive the trip, and live on life support for a couple of days, but I'm essentially a vegetable. Eventually, after the family has a chance to gather, my life support is terminated.

In a couple of days I've gone from a normal, seemingly healthy 32 year old man with all kinds of silly notions and opinions, to a boring old corpse.

This is my greatest fear, and also my biggest obsession. Consequently, it's probably a source of quite a bit of tension for me, as I've self-diagnosed myself with "stroke-like symptoms" probably a half-dozen times this year.

Dying scares me, and I think rightly so. Self-preservation is hard-wired into every single living thing, thanks to evolution. But then again, fear of death for a healthy individual is (as far as I know) just for us humans.

But I think about death a lot, and it bums me out.

For example: a road I take every day was closed this morning. I figured there must have been an accident or something. So I got to work and found this article: http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/los_angeles&id=8440070

This fatal accident happened about 2 hours before I cruise down that road for my commute. I drive a scooter. If this had been me, it would have been very bad.

Sometimes dying makes sense -- old people die all the time. Dumb people die all the time. Sometimes people get struck with genetic diseases, or get cancer for whatever reason. People take years to die, or can die in just a couple of months after ignoring symptoms.

But sometimes dying is just totally unfair.

For instance, there's this article from the Seattle Times about a couple that was sitting in their Hyundai, waiting at a stoplight. As they were sitting in their car, probably listening to the radio, or talking about inane stuff, an SUV came barreling down the street and smacked into them, going about 80 miles per hour. The Hyundai caught fire, and the couple, doing nothing at all to put their lives in danger, died together.

http://o.seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016772748_lakecitycrash16m.html

Stuff like this is just not fair. They weren't driving fast. They weren't drunk or doing drugs. They were sitting in a stopped car, and they met an unimaginable fate.

So what do I do when I see this? Usually I gasp in horror and think about how it could have happened to me, or to someone I love. Then I look for names.

Kristopher Martin was one of the people killed in the Hyundai.

I want to see Kristopher's face.

There's a picture of him in the article. Looked like a nice enough guy...probably vegetarian, shopped at Trader Joe's. Probably liked hiking. I've known a lot of guys like Kristopher.

He was also in a band called "Touch My Hand for Tenderness." I wondered if there were any clips of the band on YouTube. There were.



Typical Seattle Indie band kind of feel. On the YouTube channel, they've listed their genre of music as "Adventurous Creative Ineptitude." Self-deprecating; I love. I also love that they're basically playing on a patio, with a bunch of people walking around between the camera and the band. Kristopher's playing guitar, and he's also the lead singer. He wasn't a very great singer, but he was a pretty decent musician. He looked really tall, too.

After a little time poking around, I feel like I knew Kris pretty well. I probably wouldn't have been friends with the guy, but I could have had a pretty good conversation with the guy.

I couldn't find much about his girlfriend, but then again, I didn't look very hard. She seemed like a nice, quiet, academic type.


But I felt a compulsion to get to know this people...which is basically why I have this blog.

I'm not going to last forever. Hell, I might go tomorrow...and I honestly don't know what my obituary would look like. It wouldn't be very impressive -- it'll be tragic, sure, because of the wife and infant son and my young age and all that...but as far as "achievements," it's not like I built the Hoover Dam or anything like that. I'm just a guy who lived for a while, procreated, then all the sudden wasn't there any more. Nothing legendary or epic about my life to merit any more than a passing mention in the newspapers, depending on the details of my demise.

But I'd like to have some kind a legacy. Not some major "honorary award" kind of legacy, but just something where people who knew me could come and go, "Oh yeah...that guy. Huh." And people who didn't know me could come and go, "Oh, this guy was fascinated with his own death. That's ironic."

Basically, this blog is my legacy.

Because, as you might know, I've been doing a lot of family genealogy. The last couple of generations are pretty well fleshed out, as I've got photographs, family stories, and personal experiences with these people. I've written down what I can, because that's the kind of flavor later generations will enjoy. But you go back 100 years in my family tree all I have are the occasional black and white photo, and a lot of handwritten census bureau information. I don't know those people, and I wish to hell that I did.

So, ultimately, I'd just like people to know me...if they're curious. I'm sure there are other folks out there who feel some sense of obligation to honor the recently deceased...especially those that met sudden ends, under tragic circumstances. I'd like to give those folks the opportunity to know me, should I meet with some kind of untimely demise. And if I don't, then I'm totally fine with that, and instead this can just be a place to funnel the delusions of a man who thought his life was worthy of some kind of public scrutiny.