I had a minor scare in the last few days. I kept getting sharp pains in the middle of my chest and feeling a little out of breath for about the last three days. That and the occasional sharp tingles in my arms and jaw, plus the long history of heart disease in the family made me slowly and uneasily start thinking "Dear lord, am I about to have a heart attack?".
In typical (idiot) guy style I originally decided to rough it out until the pains went away. At the frantic urgings of my ex however, I relented to getting it checked out. A visit to the doctor quelled those fears as a blood pressure and pulse rate check, along with a few listens to the old ticker indicated everything was fine and it was more likely to be a muscular problem. I did notice the pain tends to be during certain movements and breathing thing happens mainly because I often stop breathing during panic attacks anyway. But of course when you start worrying about your own mortality, logic doesn't come into play until after you calm down. In any case, the doctor recommended coming back for a full blood work test after my holiday and I'm booking that right into GCal.
It comes down to the conclusion that we're getting older and can't afford to dick around with our health anymore as we could when we were invincible teenagers. The original reason I did any exercise was to lose the giant beer gut, but its becoming more evident that this exercise isn't just a vanity based endeavour, but imperative to continued survival. After all, I'm not ready to die yet! I have several years of good deeds to do in order to bribe St Peter at the gates.
