Health

Health is a funny thing.

When you have it in abundance you don’t think about it. When you are sick it’s the only thing you wish for.

The problem is, since in normal times your health is the last thing on your mind, the inclination is not to do anything about it. Exercise and good nutrition take a back seat to the everyday stresses of life. Daily activities take up time in a way that make something as labor intensive as lifting weights or even going for a walk nearly impossible. It is true that everyone, even the most busy of us are not truly ‘that’ busy, but we manage to make enough excuses that simple exercise and nutrition get ignored.

Or if you are anything like me, it moves beyond disregard into the realm of callous contempt. Not only was I not working out or eating right, I was drinking way too much, sleeping less than 5 hours per night for months at a time, forcing myself to work through pain and injury, and generally treating my body like a 15 dollar whore. And to top it all off, I had a job that I absolutely hated and it showed in my every action and feeling. I hated getting up in the morning to go there, I hated being there and I hated going home each night knowing that I would have to go back.

It got inside and did a number on my mind and naturally my body followed.

Never let anyone tell you that your mind isn’t the most powerful force in the world. If you are convinced in your mind that you are sick, your body WILL agree with you. Stress starts in the mind but if its left unchecked, it will affect your physical body. What started as occasional headaches became overall body pain. That morphed into even less sleep, no dreams when I did sleep, and an increase in the amount of alcohol I was drinking trying to make myself sleep.

Ultimately it culminated in an event that scared the hell out of me.

One day at work, for no reason that I can figure, I experienced an intensely sharp pain in my head above my left eye. When the pain was over and I could see again without it hurting I realized that the entire left side of my body had gone numb. Talk about panic attack city. It lasted for about an hour. I could still move my arm and leg, but I couldn’t feel them. I pinched myself a few times and it was extremely eerie that I couldn’t feel the fingers of my right hand touching the skin on my left arm. It didn’t hurt, it was just numb.

Like I said, about an hour later I got a pins and needles sensation and I realized that I could feel them again. I didn’t tell anyone about it at work. I didn’t say anything about it to my wife until later. I did still go drink with my friends on their back deck. The cold air felt good to me and helped me get my bearings back.

I realize that I probably had a mini stroke. It’s not that I didn’t care, but what was I supposed to do? The doctor was out of the question. I’d recently been to the ER and since we don’t have insurance I wasn’t interested in putting us even more into debt. I am still paying for other medical stuff. Plus, I felt fine now. No loss of motor control, no slurring, no lasting pain or numbness. Personally I think it was a physical reaction to the stress I was feeling at work and my body took the only route it had open to get my attention.

I’ve suffered with panic attacks my whole life. I chalked this up to one hell of a grand mal attack. Later on when things got weird again I did finally go back to the doctor. 6 visits, an MRI, a CAT scan and a barium test later they determined that I have a 2mm aneurism in my brain on the left side behind my eye. Did it cause the pain and numbness? They don’t know. I went to a specialist but he wanted me to have surgery, something that wasn’t going to happen without insurance. So after talking with my regular doctor and doing some reading on my own I realized that I’d just have to live with it and hope that it didn’t get any bigger. I still have weird headaches and this tingling feeling from time to time. It feels a bit like a tight hat sitting over the top of my head, I’ve come to call it ‘helmet head’. It doesn’t hurt, but it feels…strange.

Anyway, I started this blog as a warning to myself and anyone else who reads it. When your health is on the line it’s not a good idea to ignore it. Drinking won’t make it better. Hanging out with people to all hours of the morning won’t make it better. Hating your job and not doing anything about it won’t make it better. Acting like it isn’t helping won’t make it better.

The only choice you have is to realize that you only get one body and you have to take care of it, regardless of how much ‘work’ it takes. Granted, we all live only until we die, but I am of the mind that your time alive should be spent as healthy as possible so that you get the benefit. If you are always sick there’s no fun in that.

And if you are sick through indifference, that’s even worse.