June 4, 4AM.  I wake up earlier than necessary for work.  Fumble around, check the time.  Realize, as I sit up and shake off the groggy, that I am in the strangest-most intense state of pain I’ve ever experienced.  What’s going on?  I down some room temperature water. Pace for a few seconds.

I’d gone to bed the night before with a bit of soreness in my arms that had been lingering for a few days.  I thought I’d just hit the pushups too hard, or maybe it was the attempts at pull-ups.  This morning everything from my mid-body up was screaming from a deep crushing sensation.  Agony.  Pure agony.  Something wrong.

No.  Nothing wrong.  I must’ve slept weird or something.  Jump up and down a few times, pace some more.  Down some ice-cold well water.  Still dying.  I lay back down and cower but the pain doesn’t abate.  I go to my computer and pull up my insurance website.  See if any insta-care is open.  No luck.  I check for my in-network ER but am threaded through page after page of poor web design and pass-thru.  I give up in anger and take a cold shower.  Maybe the water will cleanse this and I’ll just go into work an hour early.

The water pulses over me but the pain worsens, if that’s even possible at this point.  I dress quickly in my monochromatic way and hit the computer again.  Ten minutes later I’m no closer to finding which of the local ER’s are mine, and I’ve honestly stopped giving a fuck.  I need to go. Now.  A wave of pain washes over me and I retch.  Dry, but unpleasant.  I spend a few minutes in the bathroom with my body trying to throw up nothing, and for no reason other than the pain.  I am breathing quickly now.

As I’m on the way out the door my dad shuffles into the kitchen and comes to a dead stop, noticing me.  After some explanation and quite a bit of argument from my side he wanders back to his room to get dressed and grab his keys.  At this point I’m feeling like I’m going nuclear inside and I fight the urge to snap at him to JUST.FUCKING.HURRY.ALREADY.  In my head I tell myself irrational anger is often a sign of heart attacks.  But this doesn’t feel like they describe those as.  I also tell myself denial is a symptom.  I know this.  But no.  It’s just not possible for it to be that.

So here’s where I diverge into my status/health for a minute:

I’m 36 years old.  I work out 4-5 times a week, whether it’s cycling, an intense set of pushups, weights, or a ton of crunches.  I smoked for around 12 years but quit close to 3 years ago now.  I don’t vape.  I have the occasional couple of cigarettes if I’m drinking with some friends, but never regularly, during the week, etc.  I drink, but only on the weekends and not every one.  I rarely even crack a single beer if it’s a non social situation/work night.  I don’t take any regular medication, do any drugs, etc.  Hell, I don’t even take OTC stuff if I’m sick or have a headache.

I love food.  I bake bread most sundays and I love to cook.  I consider myself a ‘foodie’ and have recently enjoyed some increased funding that’s allowed for some amazing meals out at fantastic restaurants on a pretty regular basis.  Sometimes I feel like this is one of the only real things I offer as a boyfriend to my girl, but we’ll get to that…at some other time.  I do like fatty foods and stuff like that, but for the last month or so I stopped drinking soda again and cut almost all sugar out of my diet and often my meals are a simple protein and green with some occasional starch thrown in.  I was vegan for 10 of my 36 years and still love to eat vegetarian occasionally.

What I’m trying to get at is, I don’t think I’m an incredibly unhealthy person.  I carry some extra weight on me that I’m constantly fighting to keep off/down.  I work stressful jobs.  I suck at sleep, but otherwise I exercise, eat pretty well and, most shockingly to me…am 36 years old.

Now we return to the story at hand:

I get to the ER and everyone seems sleepy.  I’m doing my best to hold it together in the midst of pain so bad I can barely form a coherent thought, let alone sentence.  I explain the pain is in my WHOLE UPPER BODY and new people keep coming by asking how I injured my arm.  Finally I get a room and they run some vitals, take some blood and such.  No worries.  I’m given a shot of some non-narcotic thing that slowly reduces the pain.  A nurse comes in.  Initial tests aren’t showing much but they’re going to shoot some blood over to the full lab.  Shortly after my pain subsides and I feel ‘normal’.

Around 9AM a doctor comes in and tells me my blood sugar is at 350 which, I guess, is incredibly high.  He thinks I may have diabetes or pre-diabetes.  Further results to come.  An hour or so later he comes back in.  The lab has noticed some strange enzymes that they usually only find with heart damage.  They’re a bit concerned but they’ve seen it happen with high blood sugar.  They want to retest, but have to wait 4 hours to pull the new sample, plus an hour to test.

I wait.

And wait.  And still feel perfectly fine.  In fact, I think at this point I feel better than I did the day before, which is cool.

I’m told by nurses and doctors that at 1pm I should expect to be on my way home.  Everything’s looking good now..just waiting on the new test for that enzyme.  I should note here that I still have not told my girlfriend I’m in the ER, because I figured I’d be home before she was off work and didn’t want to unnecessarily worry her.

1pm almost on the dot a new face walks in, seemingly not too serious expression.  He nods to my dad and sister.  ‘These family members?’

‘That must mean bad news.’ I half-joke.

‘I’m afraid it does.  Your enzyme count has gone up.  You’ve had a heart attack.’

And that’s when the whirlwind begins.