On Being Mortal

There is nothing like waking up in the middle of the night with a piecing pain in your chest, a dull aching feeling pain in your arm, nausea and the unsettling feeling that you may be having a heart attack to get your attention.  Such was my experience three weeks ago in a city away from home while on “vacation”.  I put the vacation in quotes because what I had planned to be a time away from phones, obligations,  and the like turned out to be disappointing in many aspects because of rain for a solid week and my overblown expectations.  I had also planned a much too much road trip for one week requiring eight to nine hours in the car each day on the interstate.  Need I say more? What was I thinking? 

I did see some beautiful country in retrospect and if I could have just let go of  the tight grip on my agenda and accept the rain as the gift from God for the people of Kentucky and Tennessee that had been in a drought for the past year, perhaps I would have enjoyed it more.  Perhaps.   My husband is much more phlegmatic than I am and just seemed to let it roll off of him like a duck, literally.  We purchased rain ponchos and hiked in the rain until even I could not slog through the mud anymore.  He was happy to be home in the state of his birth and be able to look up at real mountains.  All I saw were mountains enshrouded in rain.  Bah! 

As we began our trip home we encountered the nightmarish traffic on I-40 and about two million 18 wheelers determined to kill us.  Between that and having to dodge cars going 80 miles an hour, I was a wreck by the time we got to our destination that night.  That’s when I woke up with back and chest pains and nausea that had started earlier in the evening.  I woke my husband who was more that willing to take me to the hospital, but I declined, took an aspirin and eventually went back to sleep. I felt extremely tired the next day and my husband drove the rest of the way home (another 8 hours).  I had another incident a few days later after spending time in the garden, again, chest pain, nausea and tingling in my left arm.  This time, we call the local EMS.  They came, ruled out anything serious but advised I see my local doctor.  He referred me to a cardiologist who set me up for a stress test and nuclear stress test. 

Just the idea of a stress test and the nuclear stress test, sent me into orbit;  so much so that I had a full blown migraine the day before!  My massage therapist jokingly said “it’s a good thing you didn’t have to study for it!”

I am so ridiculously intense that I just knew I would fail!  One the day the I  took the test I kept asking the technicians as they injected me with the nuclear material and watching  my heart on a screen, ” That’s good, right?”  To which they would answer to my frustration impassively, “oh, yeah”.

Two weeks passed while I waited for the results with instructions to not exercise until I heard for the doctor.  I am a goer and doer.  I don’t like being told not to do.  I really don’t like being told that I am MORTAL.  But during this two weeks, I have received a rare gift.  I have piddled.  I have read.  I have dallied in my garden, not toiled.  I have baked bread, but it has not been work, but a joy.  I have sat on my back deck and listened to the birds.  I have made love more.  I have prayed more and been still.  I have done things I wanted to do  because I wanted to do them.   I have hurried less. 

I have thought about blogs I could rant about.  About how it grieves me what it happening to our country, President Obama, the health care system, taxes and so on. But in the end, I thought, why?  I will save my energy and my life for positive thoughts and people. 

Yesterday, I went to receive my report from the cardiologist.  All tests came back normal.  I have a good heart.  I can return to exercising.  I have no need to return to the cardiologist.  I hope the lessons I have learned in the last  three weeks stay with me for a lifetime.  I want to savor the life I have been given.  I want to shed the old life of being the tightly wound clock of a human like a snake sheds it’s old skin  and move to the rhythms of a new life. 

 I have been given a gift of being reminded I am mortal, and it’s okay.

Tags: Heart health, President Obama, stress, Vacation