When I first started this I wasn’t really sure how often I was going to write on it. When I was younger and people would write on their little blogs or virtual diaries they would use websites like LiveJournal.com. Is that still a thing? I honestly don’t know, but I used to post on a message board and sometimes people would post some personal stuff and since this was the kinda place cyber bullying would happen you’d see a lot of replies that just said livejournal.com. That said, I don’t have a livejournal.com account, like I said I don’t even know if such a site still exists, but… actually not knowing bothered me, so I went to look. It is still a thing. I don’t know if this is how it was back in the day, but it is still a thing.

Anyway, this being what it is, and honestly no one will probably ever read these. I don’t tweet, I don’t post things like this to Facebook, anything that would be shared. I don’t do that. This really isn’t for that purpose. This is something simply for me to put my thoughts down.

So to get down to it. About 3 weeks ago, I had a something. I was told by one medical professional that it was a heart attack, but another explained to me that it could have been something else. The point being that it was severe enough I had to be hospitalized. Was only for a day and I came out of it fine, but being hospitalized in 2021, with COVID-19 still going on in the world freaking sucks. You’re locked in a room, in my case by myself which I was thankful for, but still very much alone. Your family can’t come see you. A nurse pops in on occasion to check something or draw blood for another test, but overall it was just horrible, and I was only there for a day. People that are stuck in there for days, weeks, or longer. My heart goes out to you. I was stir crazy after a day so I can’t even imagine what they’re going through.

Prior to this cardiac incident I had been doing a workout routine nightly. Had been doing it every night for over a year actually. I started on January 5, 2020. I wanted to start on January 1, 2020, but the day before Christmas I had an incident happen in my neighborhood, a neighbor from a few streets over was walking his dogs, he was walking them down the street I lived on and a neighbor’s dog a few houses away got out of his yard and went after this man and his dogs. Some sort of pit bull looking dog against 2 Welsh Corgis. Anyway the owner of the Corgis and the owner of the pit were on top of the pit since they broke up the fight before any damage was done, but they couldn’t get up because they didn’t know if this dog was going to go back after the other 2. So one of the guys starts calling for help.

At first I was honestly a little “Should I go see what is going on? Do I want to get involved?” Since I wasn’t outside for any of what had taken place. In any case I did go outside, and I saw these 2 guys laying on top of this dog in a vacant lot across from my house. The 2 Corgis are wandering around, leashes dragging behind them. My house is fenced, there is a chain link fence around my house, about 4 feet high. It was chained and locked shut, so I decided I’ll jump the fence. I gotta get these dogs under control so we can break this all up. I jumped the fence, landed, and POP! I don’t know what I did, but I screwed my leg up royally. Got worse as time went on, I could still walk when I first did it, but the end result was I could not walk without crutches for about 2 weeks. My wife and I were actually going to go away for a few days a couple days later. We were going to spend the New Years holiday at the beach in California. That did not happen because of the whole fence issue, but no one got hurt as a result of the dog issue. All 3 dogs were fine, guys that dog piled onto the dog were fine, I screwed up my leg but I lived. I just had to start my workout program a few days later than I wanted to.

I started out doing workouts where you lay on your back, progressed to sitting ones, and eventually got to ones that are standing. Every day I was doing something. Some days were really simple, might be a 6 minute breathing workout, but I did not miss a day. Fast forward about 13 months to February 15th of this year, and my heart issues happens. I actually woke up that Monday, thinking it’s the start of a new work week, get myself together, get ready, and walk across the house to go to work. Because of Covid I work from home. But something wasn’t jiving when I woke up. I felt weird. Not like ugh it’s Monday, I have to go to work. Just something was off. My wife was up, letting our dogs outside, unrelated to the previous dogs mentioned earlier, and she comes in and she sees I’m sitting in bed just kind of in a daze maybe. I didn’t look like myself I guess you could say, so she asked me what’s wrong? I said I don’t feel right, I think I want to go to the hospital. That’s not something I generally do. I’m not someone that seeks out a doctor unless I have to. Most things that go wrong, walk it off, but this felt off. So I went to the hospital, and they took me inside, my wife couldn’t come inside with me. Thanks Covid. and they did the usual things when you go to the hospital. Temperature check, blood pressure check, things like that. I don’t know what my initial reading was, but I do remember what my highest reading was. Blood pressure, 224/110 or as they called it Cardiac Crisis. They also drew blood and did a couple tests on that since I came in saying I was having chest issues, and one of the things they test, Troponin, was elevated.

Long story made even longer, they said they were going to have to admit me, but I was going to have to be transferred to another hospital because theirs did not have a cardiologist on staff. I live in a rural community of about 40,000 people about an hour outside of Las Vegas, so I was going to have to be transferred to Las Vegas, which is where I spent that night in the hospital.

Anyway as I mentioned, I never missed a workout. Even though I had been told I had a heart attack, I didn’t want to miss one that day either, so I did a simple breathing exercise, 6 minutes long, no sweat.

While I was at the hospital, of course more tests, one of which was getting an image of my heart, trying to see how much damage this heart attack had caused. The end result was there was no damage. Like at all. Not only that but my heart was in really good condition, not just for someone that has experienced a heart attack, but for someone in general. So I asked, what can I do? What can’t I do? Can I still work out? Should I take it easy? All the things you would ask if someone has told you that you had a heart attack the previous day. They said I could, but when they discharged me they said I should see my primary doctor within the next couple days, and a cardiologist within the next 2 weeks. I made both appointments for that when I was waiting for my wife to pick me up in the lobby, and I came home.

Still I was a little nervous about pushing myself. Am I okay? What actually happened? Did I have a heart attack and just luck out? Was it not even a heart attack and just a warning high from sky high blood pressure? So I continued to do breathing exercises. I was afraid to push myself with so many unknowns. I wear an Apple Watch so I can check a lot of things going on with my body whenever I want, and so little things like walking from my bed to the bathroom to urinate I’d feel winded doing this, so I’d look at my watch. 150+ bpm. My thinking was “Jesus, why is it so high?” I still don’t know why it was so high. They said there was no damage to my heart but maybe strain so it was working overtime to just function, and increased heart rate. That’s all speculation on my part, I’m not a medical professional, so I don’t know, but it scared me, and I didn’t want to push myself until I knew something more concrete.

Fast forward to a few days ago, and I decided to try pushing myself. I still had not missed a workout day, just the past couple weeks had been a lot of breathing, but I decided I was going to try a standing workout. My heart rate had fallen to a resting heart rate in the 70s to 90s, which is normal for me, so I thought let’s give it a shot. I did a 20 minute workout and my max heart rate for that was 111 bpm. Much better considering this was a workout and it was lower than what walking across the room to use the bathroom had done a couple weeks prior. Then another couple days of breathing. Jitters about pushing myself, then we get to a few hours ago, because of the time I am typing this technically yesterday, I decided to try an even more intense standing workout. I did it. Was over 30 minutes in length, and there is quite a bit of movement, standing, on the ground, movement between the two, but I did it. I’m interested in pushing myself but still nervous since I don’t know what happened almost 3 weeks ago.

My appointment with the cardiologist was supposed to happen this past Friday, but apparently my insurance wouldn’t allow me to see this doctor because my primary doctor did not refer me to them. Doesn’t matter that the doctor at the hospital did. I of course called my primary doctor to get a referral to someone, but I still haven’t heard back from them. Called a few times to find out what is going on with that referral, but still nothing. Kinda bothers me to not know, but just kinda sitting here spinning my wheels. I’ll have to call them on Monday to see what is going on.

In any case, I am still nervous, but I’ve pushed myself a couple times with my workouts, and my body doesn’t seem to be in distress. I just have to ease into what I do since I don’t want to overdo it until I know what happened to me. The not knowing is what drives me the craziest about the whole thing.

To sum it all up honestly, I’ve had a lot of things happen in the past few months, this cardiac issue being the latest, and I know I can go further than I am not, I just have to push myself. This though, pushing myself still scares me a bit. I guess I just have to keep an eye on my Apple Watch and listen to my body. It told me something was off in the first place, so it seems to be a good indicator.