Life is precious – don’t waste it
April 12, 2022
By Steve Thomas
This column isn’t going to be one of my normal football diatribes. I’ll get back to the draft, the drama in Washington’s front office, and everything else next week. What I wanted to say here is more important, so if you would, please indulge me for a brief moment.
Like everyone, I was stunned at the news that former Redskins quarterback Dwayne Haskins was tragically killed this past Saturday in Florida when he was hit by a car while trying to cross a highway. That’s a horrible, sad loss of life, and my sympathies go out to his family.
The fact that it happened this past Saturday, though, it hit me a little closer to home than it might have for you.
Those of you who inhabit our comment section may have noticed that I didn’t post anything in that area most of last week. The reason for that is that I had a stay in the hospital, and it was serious. Let me give you a little back story. You see, I’m that person who has a great dislike for being in doctors offices, particularly being poked and prodded by nurses, med techs, and other professionals, much more than the average person. My aversion was so great that I have avoided regular annual physicals for many years. On top of that, I almost never get sick, so I’ve been able to avoid regular medical visits for most of my life. I was the type of person who only went to see a doctor when I really, really had to do so, usually at the behest of the Department of Defense.
The truth is, I’ve had an invincibility complex. Nothing was going to hurt or affect me. I don’t need doctors, because my body is strong and I’ll ultimately be fine. Well, that changed a little more than six weeks ago when I started to develop breathing problems. At first it was very small, occasional wheezing and coughing while laying down in bed at night, but it slowly developed into a serious shortness of breath when occurred I walked almost anywhere, even up the stairs in my house. It eventually caused me to have to sleep in a chair every night. Even then, because I was invincible, I was convinced that whatever the problem was would go away in time.
Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. If anything, it slowly got worse. Therefore, I finally made an appointment with a primary care physician. However, because I didn’t even have a doctor, the process of finding one and making an appointment as a new patient took about five weeks, during which time I continued to soldier on in daily life as if nothing was wrong.
I’ll spare you the gory details, but suffice to say that within the span of 4 or 5 hours last Wednesday I went from walking into a standard medical clinic (being short of breath while doing it) and having to miss 2 hours of work, to an echocardiogram on my heart in a major Houston-area hospital, to an immediate visit with a cardiologist who has a 3 month waiting list, to an admitted patient. The cardiologist wanted to do a procedure called a “heart catheterization”, in which two probes would be inserted into veins in my wrist and groin and going inside my heart in order to allow him to determine whether my heart had a blockage or whether something else was wrong.
The cardiologist bluntly told me Wednesday that I could possibly die of a heart attack within 6 to 9 months if I didn’t allow him to do the heart cath procedure. If you’ve never had something like this happen, let me tell you, to have someone say that to you is nerve-wracking, to say the least.
As it turns out, I learned after the procedure late last Thursday that while I didn’t have a blockage, my heart has become weak, possibly due to a virus, stress, simple genetics, or some other unknown cause. My shortness of breath was due to fluid in my heart and lungs that my heart couldn’t pump out because of the weakness of a certain part of my heart. I was put on a slew of medications, more than I’ve ever taken in my life, to stabilize my erratic heart rhythm, get rid of the fluid to allow me to breath, and most importantly rebuild my heart, something which has a good but not perfect success rate.
Oh, yeah, and for the next three months, I get to wear a portable defibrillator vest at all times that will shock me back to life in the off chance that I do have a heart attack and collapse despite the medications. That’s fun.
In one fell swoop, my life changed: diet, activity level, lifestyle, medical care, careful management of my regular exercise to ensure my heartrate doesn’t go up too much, life priorities. I went from being a lover of Taco Bell and Chick-fil-a a couple of times per week to scrounging through the health food section at my local grocery store looking for sodium free diet options. To be clear, I don’t even live a terrible lifestyle. I’ve never drank alcohol and never used tobacco. While I didn’t eat that badly overall, I did have large dinner portions, a couple of times per week fast food habit, and not enough vegetables, all of which meant very high daily sodium. Two months ago, I had no reason to suspect what was coming – except that I hadn’t been to a doctor in more than 3 years.
I now have an arduous and scary road ahead of me, one that perhaps could have been easier if I had embraced medical treatment sooner than I did. Don’t feel sorry for me, though – currently, thanks to the medication, I feel essentially normal aside from having an electrical vest strapped to my chest and a slew of cardiologist appointments coming up.
When mortality takes a glance in your direction, you gain an appreciation for what’s actually important in your life. The importance of family and the people who love you. Not getting hung up on the little things and life’s minor problems. Managing stress. Not taking life for granted. A healthy diet and lifestyle. The importance of the medical profession. Knowing and understanding your family medical history, which is something for which I lacked an appreciation or knowledge until last week.
What I wanted to get across to you, the reader, is to a plea to make good choices, more than I did in some areas. Take care of yourself. Be mentally tough. Embrace your faith. Eat healthy, dump your bad habits, exercise, and get an annual physical, because it could save your life. It probably saved mine, but whether an easier and safer course could have been paved for me had I regularly visited a doctor is something that I may never know but will always regret.
I couldn’t have gotten through last week without my family being there for me. I’m not going to name names in order to protect anonymity; they know who they are. I’d like to publicly thank them. I’d also like to thank the Houston Methodist Hospital system for properly referring me and then moving mountains to get me face time with two separate cardiologists and a heart catheterization done within 24 hours. You are all heroes to me.