Fake Heart Attack, The Puppy Channel, & The World's Smartest Fortune Cookie

I almost died on Wednesday. Well, not completely died, as in all the way dead, but I did get really worried that maybe I was about to die. I told you in the first post that I'd share some colossal failures, so here's the story.

On Wednesday, I had my meeting of creditors (i.e. court date) for my bankruptcy that I filed in January (long story for another day, but the short version is that I had a mortgage, real estate, and development company that crashed and burned big time recently). My attorney thought it would be an open and shut case with a five minute proceeding. Not so much. An attorney for one of my creditors showed up and proceeded to grill me for the better part of a half an hour. He tried to cast doubt on my character, which appeared to work on the trustee (i.e. the judge-like lady who runs the show for a bankruptcy proceeding), at least for awhile anyway. She started probing a lot deeper into my case too, and decided "we'll just have to research these things a bit more" instead of closing the file. In the end, they both seemed to realize that I had done nothing wrong other than failing my real estate and finance businesses in a very bad market. Nonetheless, I was on the hot seat, in front of a roomful of maybe 50 or 75 strangers, answering very difficult questions for well over a half hour. Given that I pride myself on my integrity and usually aim to please to a fault, this was extra uncomfortable for me.

This story is pertinent to my health and thus, this blog, because while I was being questioned, my heartbeat started doing baaaaaad things, man. Very bad things. It skipped lots of beats. It sped way up. It fluttered. It grew weak. It pounded furiously. The lubs separated from the dubs, sometimes skipping the dubs altogether. I could actually feel and hear all this beating and not-beating as I sat up there in my uncomfortable little chair. Oddly, it occurred to me while I was defending myself up there, that my heartbeat reminded me of the drums in a math rock band. Which is not a good thing, even though I do like math rock.

The scary part is that it didn't return to normal after I left court. I went home, put on PJs, lay down on the couch in the dark, and tried to calm my mind. Several hours went by, and I thought perhaps I was dying. My dad died of a heart attack at 55. My grandpa at 62. A great uncle at 48. I have a big barrel chest like they did. It's not totally unheard of for someone to have a heart attack at 32, especially not for someone with my family history. Thoughts of dying superseded my thoughts of bankruptcy court, which was a dubious silver lining at best. In fact, I even briefly wondered if I had sealed my ironic early death fate by starting a blog devoted to longevity.

After awhile, it occurred to me that maybe I should drive to the emergency room. But that would most certainly cost me a lot of money, insurance coverage notwithstanding, and it's not like I've got big piles of extra cash lying around. I just filed bankruptcy, remember? So I decided on the next best thing: I called my friend Kendall. Kendall is a 23 year old nurse who had heart surgery last year due to an irregular heartbeat. I figured she'd know what to do.

And she did. Once she found out that I wasn't having chest pains, my limbs weren't numb, and that I could breathe just fine, she figured that more than likely I was just experiencing premature ventricular contractions, or PVCs. Fortunately, PVCs are often caused by stress or anxiety, are usually harmless, and rarely need treatment. I just needed to get control of my mind and chill the heck out. I tried to consciously return my heartbeats back to normal, which seemed to help. I meditated and focused on my breathing, which helped a lot. Jennie, my roommate, finally got off work, came home, and gave me a face message, which was AWESOME regardless of whether it helped or not (it did). And after awhile, my heart beat finally returned back to normal.

For the past three days, every time I think about court, or dying, or finances, or even just work in general, my heart goes all crazy again. Fortunately, I can calm it down again by thinking happy thoughts, watching The Puppy Channel or CommunityChannel YouTube videos, and stopping work. I guess I hadn't realized how close to the edge I've been with all the stress in my life recently. Between failing businesses; trying to create/acquire a new income source; filing bankruptcy; and probably a lot more stuff I can't think of at the moment, I'm pretty far off the charts for unhealthy levels of stress.

I know it may sound cheesey, but I'm actually seeing this whole crisis as an opportunity. Sometimes life sucks. I'm sure it will again many times in the future. I can see how important it is to control my thinking and consciously keep my stress levels low. Partly because I'll have to deal with stress again in the future, and if I'm not in charge of my mind, I'll damage my body badly, possibly irreparably. And partly because if stress has this bad of an effect in large amounts, it probably still has a deleterious effect on our bodies even in small amounts--possibly even more so considering that a constant flow of stress every day never gives our bodies and immune systems a chance to rest. I can see how easily 20 or 40 or 80 years of constant stress will age our bodies in myriad ways.

The opportunity for me is that now I know all this from firsthand experience. I'm a thickheaded person sometimes, often having to learn everything the hard way, but I am learning. I'm learning at a relatively young age how to control my thoughts, lower my stress levels, and consciously control my body systems to be healthier and more balanced. Better to learn this now than by actually having a fatal heart attack in 20 years. It didn't kill me, so I guess I'm stronger now? I once read a different zen koan-ish proverb, probably in a fortune cookie, that went something like this: "One disease, long life. No disease, short life." Nah, who am I kidding...fortune cookies are never that wise or furtune-y. I probably made it up.