An intro, of sorts

Four years ago I almost died. I was 36 years old. At the time I was lost, confused, and somewhat broken. I put on the cheery face and changed my life and recorded some of my angst in a blog I titled myheartattackyear and only incidentally shared with a couple of people.

After a while I kind of forgot about the blog and I’ve been using music and painting as my primary outlets but recently I find those things unfulfilling..or at least not serving the purpose of distracting my churning brain. Since it was only ever intended to be temporary I decided to create a new one rather than resurrecting the old one.

I’m not sure why, I guess because of my age, but I kind of prefer to scream into the void rather than solely on paper. There’s a whole me out there on the internet in the livejournal archives that just begs for help and attention, and got it at the time. Then came blogger, blogspot, etc. Facebook and the like never seemed to fill the gap of real, tangible, emotional release. So several forgotten journals later, here we are.

So after that awful day I changed my life. I changed my diet, stopped drinking, started going to the gym nearly every day, etc. I lost a bunch of weight, put on a bunch of muscle, and have been holding as steady as possible since then. I’ve lived through the boredom of sobriety, and of a “new me!” and have come through relatively unscathed, aside from financially and, it might be argued, emotionally.

The last 7 months or so I’ve been dealing with new health issues, in spite of all the healthy changes. I’ve been experiencing chest pressure, a constant headache, vertigo, and clumsiness. I recently made a list of the things I’ve been through trying to get this figured out, which goes as follows:

Cardiac stress test (nuclear) – good

ECG – good

Neurologist exam – good

Medical eye exam – good

Dental exam – good (minor cavities..no infection, etc)

ENT exam – good (more testing scheduled 2 wks out)

MRI – good

Chest X-ray – good

Head x-ray – good (only left side)

Lung function test – good

Mono test – no mono

H pylori test – no pylori

Testosterone test – good

Multiple bloodwork – all baseline numbers good

Vitamin D slightly low – took D supplement

Thyroid test – good

B12 test – good

Mono test – good

Tried trokendi – no pos. change. Bad side fx

Tried amitryptyline – no apparent change. Side fx. Tapering off now.

Round of z-pak – no change

BP on the low end of perfect – halved metoprolol. No change. BP still good

Stopped livalo temporarily – no change

Blood sugar slightly elevated from norm but still far within healthy range

Checked house for radon

Tested house and car for monoxide

Stayed in a different city for 10 days to rule out house allergies

Needless to say (but yeah, saying it anyway) I’m stressed as hell. I haven’t been to the gym regularly in months, my blood sugar is creeping up, my mental state is constantly trapped by not feeling well, and I need an outlet.

So here it is. This new thing. I will likely never share this, even with the people who saw the previous iteration. If you stumble across it, that’s cool. I’d love for you to comment, or just to silently lurk and hopefully enjoy.