10: Ups and Downs of Heartache

 

Have you ever seen the film Serendipity? John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale in a romantic comedy for the ages. Cusack was well established in Rom-Coms by 2001, and Beckinsale was just beginning her career, hot on the heels of Pearl Harbor from earlier that summer. The film was a much-needed break at the time from the world events taking place. You see, that movie premiered two days after September 11, 2001. 

Fate was a big theme in the film. In the case of the movie, fate was a good thing bringing two people together in love. It was an inspiring film for me then, as I was in love with my girlfriend at that time. A sweet, young woman by the name of Leslie Bowen, who later became Leslie Thrift. The film was merely a stepping stone along the way of things that led me to my fate of marrying the love of my life. So, perhaps it is fate that started weaving its threads by January 2022, trying to help me see where my life needed to go next.

When bad things happen, you have one of two choices. You can choose to wallow in it, or you can choose to rise above.

I needed to take my advice from 2001, don't wallow in the bad, no matter how bad it can get. Nothing could have been worse than the events of 9/11, yet I chose to find the good in life and move forward like many others. Many people came together, standing united for those whose lives had been lost that day. In my own personal life, I knew what would make me happy. It was a serendipitous moment, to say the least.

But in January 2022, I chose to wallow in negativity. I wasn't feeling '22 by any means.

I just kept playing that number, 5.8, over and over again in my head. In this case, it was not serendipitous. It was just plain being vane, and took me months to get over it. Even then, months later, it wasn't at my own behest but at my heart's.

Your heart will tell you a lot of things throughout life. It told me who I was in love with many years ago. It also will tell you when something is wrong. Something was definitely wrong at the beginning of 2022 with my own mentality. To use a quote from Star Wars, "I have a bad feeling about this." That one line perfectly surmises the initial months of 2022.

After I got through Christmas, I put on some weight. I actually took this as a good sign because, unlike the Christmas before, where I lost weight through the holidays, I gained some. That seemed "normal." Because of the delicious food, you should gain weight through the holidays. Losing weight in 2020 was odd, but gaining in 2021 made me feel like my body was working the way it is supposed to now. I went up only 4 pounds, but that wasn't bad. Sometimes in the past, my weight went way higher than that during the holidays. So, I took this in stride and tried not to worry. I would lose that weight later.

My heart was saying otherwise, though. I kept having the PVCs off and on. Premature Ventricular Contractions, or PVCs, just a reminder, are pretty common. I was having them quite a bit, though. More than you should. They weren't bad, but the PVCs just kept coming. Like I said before, stress can play a part in PVCs occurring. I was decidedly under a lot of stress.

My eating habits shifted back to pre-holiday ways, some anyway, and my workout routine remained the same, minus lifting weights. I just didn't have time to lift weights right now. Not while trying to get my dissertation study underway. That being said, a big stress early on in that year was getting IRB approval wrapped up. It was taking forever, and it was being compounded by OMICRON.

I like to call Omicron Unicron. That's the big transformer from Transformers the Movie back in 1986. Omicron was wreaking havoc and caused a lot of sickness. Not nearly as many deaths, but so many people got that variant compared to previous ones. I was fortunate not to get it at that time. However, Omicron impacted everyone's work, including my own. I was stressing a lot. There didn't seem to be any real help in January additionally. Finally, in February, my study was approved, and I was able to begin. My stress came down some but clearly was still playing a big factor.

So, what do you do when you're stressed? Sometimes you tend to overeat.

Now, I wasn't doing horrible with my eating, but I was eating things sometimes that I had reduced. More ice cream. More popcorn. More junk. Consequently, my weight kept creeping up. That creeping was stressful. Add that to trying to get my study where it needed to be, plus analyzing things, plus regular work, and it was beginning to add up. The next thing thrown on the pile was a new job consideration.

Really and truly, I didn't need to be applying for any jobs during this time. I didn't need any more stress than I was already under. But I believed I had a good chance to get the job. So, naturally, by March, I had applied and interviewed and did my very best, as always. But all I did was stress. Stress about work. Stress about school. Stress about my diet. Stress about this new job venture. Stress about the 5.8 A1c. Four months later, at the end of March, I was still stressing about my A1c going up. My next A1c evaluation was looming in May, so that added more stress. Will my A1c go up again? That's all I could think about. By the anniversary of the A1c of 10 on March 31, 2022, my weight had gone up 6 pounds since November's check-up. I wasn't eating that great, but mostly because I was focusing on the few times I had eaten poorly instead of all the times I was doing well. Additionally, on that particular day, I ran 1.5 miles just for a tune-up run to prepare for my next 5K race. I was commemorating the anniversary of 1 year since the high A1c, truly high too, with a run that I hadn't been doing the year before. That's when my heart didn't want to go on.

My heart was racing after that run, and it unnerved me greatly. Eventually, my heart settled down. But over the next few days, that feeling kept happening. Even when I went for walks around the neighborhood, that racing feeling would happen. Until one day, I felt short of breath. Then I felt some pain in my back. Then my wife and I both got scared. I first went to Urgent Care to be checked, and everything seemed "normal." They said if I had more sensations like that, go to the emergency room (ER). The next morning, the pain happened again. So, I went to the ER. I got to spend most of my day hooked up to a monitor trying to figure out what was going on with my heart. During that time in the ER, I got a text from someone who needed something work-related. They didn't know I was in the ER, so I had to tell them what was happening. That's when they replied, "You need to SLOW DOWN."

They were right.

I was going forward on all thrusters. Full speed ahead. I was running a race in my head all the time, with racing thoughts about work, life, school, you name it. It finally affected something more vital, my heart.

I spent the next month and a half trying to understand what was going on with my heart. Had the damage already been done from the A1c the previous year? This was my one big thought at that time. Did the elevated A1c of 10 cause some damage. It made me lose weight, urinate frequently, and feel irrational leading up to the day I realized it, so why couldn't an A1c of 10 affect my heart too.

The only problem with this thought, I didn't have an A1c of 10 anymore. I hadn't had one that high in a year. 5.8 was the worst it had been since March 31, 2021. That's when it hit me. That's not bad.

I'm sure you're thinking, FINALLY!!!

I realized I was stressing too much. I was being ridiculous, honestly. The A1c of 5.8 was nothing to be this concerned about. It went up, but not bad. That was something I could easily bring back down, far easier than the 10 I had to spend 4 months bringing down to 5.6 by August 2021. I was stressing needlessly and attributing things in negative ways. My heart issue ended up being serendipitous.

I slowed down, stopped worrying about things so much, and did what I needed to do. 

By mid-May 2022 I had multiple EKGs, an Echocardiogram, and stress tests, and all said the same thing. Your heart is fine, Jason. You're the problem. Quit being part of the problem and start being part of the solution (to steal a line from Die Hard, minus the color metaphors). 

The point of the film Serendipity is fate or destiny can lead you where you need to be. By May 2022, I was finally going in the right direction. Much like the film, there were many twists and turns along the way since November, but they all pointed me to where I needed to be. I needed to stop worrying. As the bible verse says, "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."-Matthew 6:34. The rest of the passage is one I like too, and you can see it here: Matthew 6:25-34. 

I like this excerpt that really speaks directly to what I was going through at that time:

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?"-Matthew 6:25-27.

As my wife would say, "You're a worry wart. Stop it!" She's very good about telling me like it is sometimes. I love that. Twenty-one years strong with that too. Just one of the many reasons I married her. She's my Kate Beckinsale, and I'm her John Cusack. Like their characters Sara and Jonathan, Leslie and I are destined to be together.

I am a worry wart. I was worrying needlessly about EVERYTHING. All it got me was a visit to the doctor that could have been avoided. If I had never worried about the A1c of 5.8, the whole beginning of 2022 might have gone somewhat differently. But those were my serendipitous moments along the way, leading me to a beneficial moment to come. Now, after the cardiology visit, the big day was approaching for the A1c evaluation. What would it be this time? Whatever it would be, I'd take it in stride, stop worrying, and whatever will be, will be. Que sera sera.

Tune in for the next segment, 10: May Day.