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OK, kind of late, but I had a stress related scare this weekend, which is a rundown of how *not* to destress.
Thursday, had a bad day. Really bad, really stressed out, just one bad thing after another. Started off with a blinding headache, followed rapidly by elevated pulse, shallow breathing, and then proceeded on to a crushing sensation in my chest, light headedness, and pain and numbness in my left arm. Oh, and my fingers were ice cold. All in all, really bad signs that there was something drastically wrong.
Sucked it up, finished up the work day. Not sure how, felt disconnected from everything and couldn't focus at all. Bad times.
Got home, completely exhausted. My wife had been pestering me all day, trying to get me to go to the hospital, but I was just too unfocused and wasn't listening to any kind of reason. She finally put her foot down, and bundled me into the car and off to the ER. Filled out some paperwork, blah blah blah, and as soon as I mentioned my symptoms they had me back in the back on an EKG. That came back fine, so they brought me back out to the waiting room, and checked my vitals, and basically said they'd have me in as soon as they had a room available.
They put me in a room, and started hooking up all sorts of monitors. Another EKG, drew about a gallon of blood for a battery of tests, IV complete with saline drip to replace fluids, chest X-Ray, baby aspirin, and, just to make everything smooth, ativan. Oh, and nitroglycerine gel. Can't forget the headache that gave me... The ER doctor comes in, goes through the checklist, decides I need to be admitted so they could run a stress test when he noted that it hurt when he squeezed my chest.
They kept me on monitoring equipment all night, several more EKGs, more blood work, woke me up a few times.
Surprisingly, everything came up pretty good. My cholesterol is great, my blood pressure is normal, heart looks fine, no indication of any problems on the stress echo. I think I surprised the folks who ran the stress test, because I smoke about a pack a day, and they looked at me weird when I asked if they'd speed up the treadmill. I do walk my dog every day, after all... the incline was a whip though.
The end result? Stress. Too. Damn. Much. Stress. I seriously thought I was going to die. I came home with a prescription for Xanax, and while it's helping a lot, something definitely needs to change. I am still too all over the map to decide what it is I want to do, but where I am right now definitely isn't it. I had been in the process of changing primary care physician, and since I'd had all the bloodwork they'd normally do with a new patient, I got bumped to have a follow up with her yesterday, and for the first time in a long time I feel like there's something that can be done to help.
Stress **** sucks. Being medicated is kind of a drag, too, but really, it beats the alternative. First day back at work, I can feel the stress, but it's not so immediate, and easier to deal with. Sure, some of it is the Xanax talking, but at this point I'll take what I can to get through a day without seeing the extremes of what stress can do to the body.
I know there's a lot of work to be done to get my **** back together, but there it is. A step in the right direction.
This is in part meant to share with the community I've been a member of for years. And in part to warn, like some lame *** public service announcement. If you get so stressed out to the point where it's impacting your health, go see your doctor. Believe me, once you hit a certain point, and the stress isn't letting up, it's either get help, or get dead.
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