10 Jan Training, life, hospital and the wakeup call of wakeup calls
I will attempt to keep this as short as possible, but this is something a lot of us need to be aware of and read.
I came down with strep and flu a few months ago and ever since then I didn’t feel right. I was constantly fatigued, out of breath doing everyday things and started to see a little edema in my ankles.
I went to the doc and went back on blood pressure meds and the more severe symptoms seem to have went away… or so I thought.
As the days and weeks went on, the fatigue lingered and I simply could not give 100% effort in the gym. I figured it was a phase and I needed to eat more, but my appetite was shit as well. Not only was my appetite terrible, I had GI issues so I seemed to be developing food allergies because certain foods would fuck me up.
Or so it seemed….
All this self diagnosis and attempts to fix it myself were pointless.
The last few weeks I started to see some weird shit happen to me, stuff like getting dizzy and feeling faint when walking, I would get severely light headed lifting with even light weights, I was getting even more gassed doing anything at the gym and I started to see my cheeks and nose take on a dark red almost purple color.
I was starting to get scared.
Saturday was the last straw, I went to the ER and this is what happened; I had a resting heart rate that day of 199.
I was in Atrial Fibrillation and they rushed me into the hospital and checked me in.
During that time they said my kidneys weren’t functioning at the level they should be, and that comes from lack of proper blood flow to them. I have slight cardio myopathy but the thickening isn’t that bad at all, so that is something I can work with, they medicated me with beta-blockers, rate controllers, diuretics to flush water from me and blood thinners.
I am on those 4 medications still and will be for a while.
The worst of my concern was hearing heart failure, and it is a reality.
Now the heart failure is caused from being in Afib for a while (which I was now that I look back on the last several months) and is reversible, but it will take time, patience and a massive overhaul of my diet to be low fat and low sodium.
I will have to drop weight and I will have to be careful with supplements.
Facts are facts and you can deny this all you want and ignore it, but the truth is the truth… what we do to ourselves isn’t fucking about health. Our size, our willful disregard of health, our use of stimulants to power through workouts, our supplement usage, our lack of cardio… combine that all and we have an elephant in the room that needs to be addressed.
It is your choice to do what you want with your body and training, but if you are ignorant of potential ramifications you are foolish.
I was… despite my family history of heart issues I am now the youngest and “healthiest” member of my family to ever go through this and I bet it could have been avoided if I had been just a little smarter and not quite so hard headed about my own health.
This is not a death sentence, but it is a huge wakeup call to get my shit in order to keep myself healthy and alive into my old age the best I can.
I probably took a few years off my life so I will salvage what I can now, but the days of reckless ignorance about “it won’t happen to me” are gone.
It did happen to me and it sure as fuck can happen to you and I bet you some of you reading this right now are currently dealing with it silently and hoping it goes away.
It won’t go away unless you get it treated.
Afib isn’t something to laugh at, untreated can lead to Myopathy, heart failure, strokes, etc…
Sitting in the hospital for 5 days for this was hard for me.. Seeing my own mortality come up like this is brutal. I was scared, pissed, sad, hopeful and ambivalent at different times. Ultimately after taking a few days to take it all in, I am mostly hopeful.
This isn’t cancer, and I don’t want sympathy or “you can do its”… what I want is to make this something you are aware of as this CAN be you in that hospital bed if you are not taking care of what needs to be with your health.
My goals are to drop to 235, train like a bodybuilder for a while, force myself to eat better meal choices and stick to this as a lifestyle change rather than ignoring the future.
If you feel like you are having symptoms like I did, don’t ignore them… get to a doctor or ER and get yourself checked out ASAP. The heart isn’t something to fuck with…
Now…. time to fix this shit and be better for it. It won’t happen overnight as damage done to my heart and rhythm issues still need to be fixed completely, but in time it will happen and each day I am feeling slightly better… the meds make me nauseous and I still have moments of being tired as shit but that is to be expected until I am back to normal.
Let the fun begin.
admin
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