Heart Attack, or so I thought

[jimmyj]

For the last month or two I have been having ongoing chest pains. They are usually in my upper left chest and also in my left arm. I have been under a lot of pressure at work and years ago I had the same thing but the doctor said it was stress related.

Anyhow, it was getting worse and worse and I started to feel them continuously with a week long headache, shortness of breath, elevated blood pressure and nasuea. That was enough so I went to the hospital.

Long story short, my heart and blood are as healthy as a horse. Boy was I releived. The doc said I was exhausted and needed some time off. I talked to my boss and I took two weeks vacation. Feeling better after about 4 days of not working (except the crackberry from time to time).

This AM i read Robert in NY's post about losing 4 friends, wow, life is too short everyone, this scare is a lesson to me! I thought I would share it with others who are probably in the same boat.

 

[Low Bucket]

Jimmy,

Good to hear that it wasn't nothing worse!- It's great to hear that your heart is healthy!:thumbsup:

I'm glad you shared this.

Take care and enjoy your vacation!

Paul

 

[Lloyd_E]

Jimmyj

Did you take a treadmill stress test. If not I would.

lloyd

 

[LBrown59]

For the last month or two I have been having ongoing chest pains. They are usually in my upper left chest and also in my left arm. I have been under a lot of pressure at work and years ago I had the same thing but the doctor said it was stress related.

Anyhow, it was getting worse and worse and I started to feel them continuously with a week long headache, shortness of breath, elevated blood pressure and nasuea. That was enough so I went to the hospital.

Long story short, my heart and blood are as healthy as a horse. Boy was I releived. The doc said I was exhausted and needed some time off. I talked to my boss and I took two weeks vacation. Feeling better after about 4 days of not working (except the crackberry from time to time).

This AM i read Robert in NY's post about losing 4 friends, wow, life is too short everyone, this scare is a lesson to me! I thought I would share it with others who are probably in the same boat.

It's times like this that make you realize what's important and what is trivial in life .
I know that i've experenced it several times in the past 5 years.

 

[rdln]

40 and sit at a desk and in car 11 hours a day, started to get palpatations, stress test and echocardiogram later, no problems found.

yes that stuff is scary

 

[tugboat-2]

Hey there jimmy,...sorry to hear the scary part but oh so happy to hear you are okay!! WOW,...that stress stuff is not good. Causes all kinds of problems,..so do what you have to to get rid of the things that cause stress in your life.

I know that is not always easy, but work at it, its worth it,...get rid of it!!

Stress is what kills! Sorry to be so blunt jimmy but it is so very important. Take advantage of your time off to get a handle on it. God Bless you jimmy!!

CHEERS!
. . tug

PS: Take Note: ~~"IF WORRY WON'T HELP,....DON'T!!!~ /Arthur Slaght

 

[Thomas]

Glad your okay Jimmy.
Life scare can give one different out look..wake up call if you will,from that point on life can have whole new meaning.

 

[polo1665]

Also glad to hear your o.k. jimmy. Stress levels on the job these days have definitely gone through the roof, and with todays communication technology they make it hard to truly get away from your work. I suggest you go the extra step and put that Blackberry away as well. Relax and enjoy yourself for a couple weeks, the job will be there when you get back. I'm sure your family wants you to be around for awhile.

Take care of yourself

Mark

 

[TBDonnelly]

While you're off work for a couple of weeks it's a good time to 'plan forward' and think about what you're going to do to manage the stress levels and ways to de-stress on a daily basis from here on out. Spend some time searching on the WWW for helpful/healthful ideas to relieve stress.

Don

 

[jinman]

Jim, I'm glad you've taken some time off to relax. I was lucky in that when my job's stesses rose to unbearable levels, I could just walk away and retire. Now, I think I've gone the other way where my life is too easy. Fat and lazy are two adjectives that fit all too well.:laughing:

As suggested, I hope you'll continue to get tested and make sure this is all a false alarm. You're too nice of a guy to have to put up with the hassles of cardiopulmonary problems at your age. Prevention is not only the best, it's also the easiest. Rehab is never fun.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Every test has shown I have the heart of a horse, okay, mule. But what I found interesting was when I went to the doctor about chest pains and such the testing came back with severe carpul tunnel syndrome both hands.

Yeah. That's what I thought too. But evidently they were right in my case becaue I've found the pains if they're still there don't reach the level of recognition. I've found that true with just about everything when it comes to pain for me. Once I understand why then it just seems to fade into the background and I allow for it I guess on a lower level conciousness.

I understand I have severe carpul tunnel problems and it doesn't bother me much anymore. I suspect part of the reason for this is I understand that there's always been carpul tunnel problems and people got by with it without surgery. I also seem to be able to deal with the pain on some level that's below the irritation line.

A short while ago I had some pretty tough pain in the ******** area. I finally went to the doctor because prostate cancer is one of the Agent Orange things some of us have to worry about. It turned out that I have vericeles I think they call it. That's vericose veins in the testicles. It can be painful and some people deal with it surgically. A day or two after having it explained to me by the urologist the pain has gone away and hasn't returned. Supposedly it's attributed to and exaggerated by strain. I do physical work and haven't changed a thing and the pain is gone.

I'm glad it wasn't your heart and just due to stress. Stress is something that seems to beyond me. I guess because stress is always about things out of my control and I don't get too excited about stuff beyond my control.

 

[MossRoad]

Glad you are O.K. Same thing happened to me about a year ago... drove myself to the hospital, got all the tests. It was stress. Economy related and fear of the unknown, mostly. The main thing that got me calmed down was realizing the economy is happening to everyone, not just me. I have made no bad decisions financially. And I still have a job. I also thought about my dad losing his job at least 3 times during his working career. He came out O.K. We had a roof and food so we were O.K., too.

 

[jimmyj]

Thanks all for your kind words and good advice.

I have not had the treadmill test but I certainly am going to. And, I'm going to start exercising 'cuz as much as I've been in denial, 44 ain't 24 in real life.

It's a great thing this life. We are in Vegas right now and I'm typing from the 60th floor looking out over the airport and strip. We have been walking a lot, meeting all sorts of really nice people and enjoying ourselves. (I must admit though we have not made midnight yet ha ha ha, silly country folks).

The thing is I really like my Company, I am proud of what I do and who I work with. I even really like my boss and that is not an everyday comment it seems. There just has to be more of a division of work and home. The email, 24 hour contact etc is too much and frankly it is not necessary. I have been "on call" for emergencies for 24-7 for over 20 years and until recently, I can recall only a small number of times I had been called before the "modern communications era" began. And they were all legit emergencies. People almost seemed to be apologetic to call ..."uh, sorry to bother you but there has been a fire, flood, accident....". Now, there is so little respect for time away at all. This is a lesson in how I need to manage things.

So, some resolutions:

1. manage work and home time more stringently
2. lose the extra 15 pounds I have gained in the last 2 years
3. exercise more regardless of my weight

It's interesting and in a way TBN related because I can work around the "farm" for hours and hours and hours and never be stressed at all regardless of how nasty or frustrating the job I am working on is. The one thing that the tractor has done that has hindered my health is that it has engineered at lot of manual labor out of my days. I can't say I miss the manual work, but I have not replaced it with any other real exercise.

Best wishes to all of you, thanks again for your encouragement. And, if someone esle sees some parallels to what they are doing (as there must be based on the posts so far) please take the topic to heart, literally.

Jim

 

[MossRoad]

On the topic of being on-call... is there anyone else on call besides you? If not, push for someone else to be trained. The pressure of having the weight of the world on your shoulders builds up over time and can be very stressful.

There are four of us on call at my job. We are on call "officially" every fourth week, meaning we are the primary contact that week. However, each of us specializes in a different area, and know we can get called by the primary on-call person 24/7/365 if needed. The primary on-call person has to identify the problem first and if they cannot solve it, they call the person that can. The person that can solve the problem is then obligated to teach the primary person how to solve it (share the knowledge) so that everyone eventually knows how everything else works. It takes up to two years to get a new person completely up to speed, but is well worth it. I have to say, this is fantastic compared to the old way of "get your butt in here and fix it". I can go for weeks at a time without getting called and then the call is just to ask a quick reference question. We rarely get called for support for the same thing twice. We work as a team so that we can spend as much time away from the office with our families as possible. It makes us want to help each other so we can get the primary person out of there and back home ASAP.

I highly recommend it. :thumbsup:

 

[Lloyd_E]

jimmyj,

Why I asked about the stress test is your symptoms are like the ones I had and in the end
I had to have stent put in. The pain would come and go but was severe enough one day to scare me to go to emerge. Unfortunately this was the best wake-up call that I needed - unfortunately because I new I had to loose the weight and get back into shape but didn't.

So after a year I lost 45+ lbs and am in good shape.

Keep an eye on this an have a stress test... asap.

Take care.

 

[scott_vt]

Good Evenin Jimmy,
So glad to hear that all turned out well !

At 58 I try to keep an eye on the blood pressure and keep any stress to a minimum, along with trying to keep my weight around 180 or just below. Doing oil delivery there is quite a bit of physical activity during the day, so weight usually isnt too much of an issue...

Glad to hear things are OK !

 

[mburke121]

Jimmy, glad to hear you're OK. I had a similar scare about 3 years ago - the battery of tests revealed nothing - just stress. I find that seat time and time in the outdoors in general does wonders I've trained myself to turn the sounds off on my wireless devices after hours, and only check them when I'm good and ready. You should try it - it really isn't that bad once you get used to it

 

[MarkV]

Jimmy, glad you are ok. Don't forget your tag line and let the company spend too much of your coin.

I have a friend that is a cardiac surgeon, has a lot of stress and sees a lot of tragedy. I stopped by his place one time and he had bought a brand new full size industrial backhoe. When I ask him why he said he liked to go into the pasture and dig holes to relieve stress. I've been trying to convince the wife I have enough stress to get a dozer. Hasn't worked but it was worth a try.

MarkV

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Jimmy, glad you are ok. Don't forget your tag line and let the company spend too much of your coin.

I have a friend that is a cardiac surgeon, has a lot of stress and sees a lot of tragedy. I stopped by his place one time and he had bought a brand new full size industrial backhoe. When I ask him why he said he liked to go into the pasture and dig holes to relieve stress. I've been trying to convince the wife I have enough stress to get a dozer. Hasn't worked but it was worth a try.

MarkV

Many many years ago in Southern California I built some corrals for a banker that had a couple of acres, just enough for a couple of horses and a home. He also had a backhoe for the same reason.

The way he explained it was that after a bad day using the hoe to dig a hole was the perfect medicine. He said he wasn't good with the hoe and so he had to concentrate everything he had to operate it. He'd dig a hole and then fill it back in. By the time he was done everything was better even if it wasn't.

I have a friend here in Wylie that has what his wife refers to as the two hundred thousand dollar mailbox. One evening he received a phone call that one of his forklift operators had damanged the corporate jet, two hundred thousand dollars worth. He went to the garage and made himself a nice mailbox. It helped.

 

[jimmyj]

Great story about the maibox! We just got home yesterday and I go back to work tomorrow. I'll arrange a stress test asap but my doctor takes a couple of weeks to book.

I feel better, and MossRoad, I do have 19 people on call before they get to me, so the calls come a lot less often for "real" emergencies so managing the rest is up to me know. And I'm up to the challenge.

We had a good time on vacation, I had to work 1 day but it was interesting and we had never been to Vegas so it was very interesting. I'm not a huge "party animal" but we had fun being tourists and went on the Grand Canyon Helicopter tour which was AMAZING! I'll post in the photo forum about that.

We lost a lot of snow last week at home, there is hardly any left. Mud season is upon us and I'm running out of hay so I've got to get some today.

In the words of Wroughtn_harv

Life is good.

(Now I just gotta lost that 15 pounds!)