Nothing like a visit to the Doctor to give you a reality check.
For the record, I’m 54, and both my father and my grandmother were cursed with heart problems. Both were the recipients of angioplasties, stents, and were members of the zipper chest club from the bypasses they both had. Over the weekend, I began having very sharp chest pains, one on Saturday Night, one on Sunday Night. When I say sharp, I mean stop you in your tracks, right in the sternum, radiates down both arms all the way down to the fingers and through to between your shoulder blades in the back, and sweating like nobody’s business. I had already had a Doctor’s appointment on Monday afternoon, so I told the wife that I would keep the appointment and if they sent me to the ER then I would go and we’d get this taken care of.
I walked into the little room and got the weight and medication information taken care of, and while the PA was taking my blood pressure I mentioned what happened to me over the weekend. She excused herself and soon returned with a box, out of which she took the various attachments for an EKG. She took the test, removed everything but the tape from my chest at my request (“I’ll do that part myself, thanks”) and left. 10 mins later, the Doctor arrives and asks me if I knew that I have had a heart attack in the past.
Wait, what?
”Yeah, your EKG shows that you’ve already had a heart attack. Any idea when that might have been?”
Some years ago when I first returned to the gym, I had what I thought was a really bad muscle cramp in my pectoral muscles on the way home. I had done the chest fly pretty hard that day, so I thought I was just having a reaction to that. But then I remembered all the things that happened along with that cramp. Sweats, radiating pain, the works. “Oh,” I said, “Yeah, I think I have an idea.”
“Ok, well, we’re going to send you to a cardiologist, since I knew your Mom and Dad and their issues. Not playing with you.” That’s the advantage (or disadvantage) to having the same doctor since the age of 15.
Last night was spent re-evaluating a lot of things, as you might imagine. I am prime breeding ground for high blood pressure, cholesterol, heart problems, and cancer. All of this runs in my family. I thought I had dodged this bullet getting to the age of 54 without having any problems, but here we are. I had a problem and didn’t even realize it, and I can’t stress enough what kind of a mindfuck that was.
Time to make some changes. Again. I’m just not ready for any of this yet.
The big joke that you slowly come to realize through your life is that when you’re 18 you think 54 is old. Then you get to 54 and realize that you’re nowhere near old if you don’t want to be.
The really funny part? Doc doesn’t think I had a heart attack this weekend. He thinks I might have overdone the caffeine (totally possible), and that I had really bad acid reflux from what I ate. No damage was done over the weekend to my heart, otherwise the EKG would have shown that instead of the old damage that he saw in the readings. Still, it sent me a very clear message.
Believe me, I’m listening.