Don’t be a Hero!!

You know, when I was a kid, the Incredible Hulk was my favorite super hero. He would take out the bad guys, smash things up, and he never got hurt. It seemed to me that he was unstoppable, and as a kid, I had always wished I would be big and strong just like him. Now, I’m all grown up (my wife might disagree) and The Hulk is all but a childhood memory, or is it?

Being a Personal Trainer, working out 5 or 6 days a week, and sticking to a reasonable nutrition program, gave me the false sense of security that I was invincible. I’ve been in great shape for years and nowhere near the Incredible Hulk, but leading the healthy lifestyle. Then strange things started happening. I woke up one night 3:00am and the room was spinning and I couldn’t even move for almost a minute. Then I felt nauseas and dizziness for a couple of weeks before I ended up in the emergency room. My heart rate dropped into the 30′s and the doctor suggested I wear a Holter monitor to keep track of my heart for 24 hours. My dizziness and nausea went away after a couple more weeks and thought I was over whatever my problem was. The doctor called me and said my Holter monitor results were in and she thought I should see a Cardiologist. So, I figured I’ll just go see the Cardiologist and he’ll tell me I’m fine and that would be that. The next thing I know the Cardiologist is telling me I might need a pacemaker, I couldn’t drive or work, and he wanted to run more tests. I couldn’t believe it. I thought, I take care of myself, I workout, I eat right, how could this happen. At this point with some of the testing done the doctor is feeling that I might not need the pacemaker after all, but I need to do a couple more tests and wear a 30 day event monitor to make sure. So, I’m not sure exactly how this will all turn out and it might ending up being something viral that has passed and I’ll be fine. The reason why I wanted to write this post was to point out that even though you might think that you too are in great shape and things will work themselves out, you might be doing more harm to yourself. Don’t be a hero. I waited it out 2 weeks, when I probably should have been checked out after a couple of days. You know your body, you know if something isn’t right, get checked out for yourself and your family.