Going Down to the Crossroads

Have you ever experienced a true low point in your life?  Have you ever been faced with your own mortality or experienced an overwhelming barrier that seems insurmountable?  In recent weeks, I have endured such a challenge.  Like myself, I look around and see that most people are riding helter-skelter in the rapids of life rather than controlling the ebb and flow of their own journey. 

Why is it that we violate our own nature and fall prey to the consequences of destructive choices?  I am an ordinary family man, a simple and average American.  I am an accountant toiling in the everyday world, and like most, I seek rewarding challenges.  Inside, I know it’s not what we do, but how we do it that is the true stuff of greatness; and yet, at the age of fifty-two, I find myself spinning out of control, standing at the edge of a of dark abyss.  My choices are critical and my well-being is at stake.

I suppose the real warnings started a couple years when I became very ill with gastrointestinal symptoms.  I was later diagnosed with diverticulitis.  Since then I have experienced periodic bouts of gastric distress – at times this can be very painful and debilitating.  Also various and seemingly unrelated symptoms have emerged.  I have visited many doctors and followed their advice, but the malady continues to return.

About three weeks ago on a Friday night, while sitting at my computer, I began to feel ill.  It was a familiar and yet, unfamiliar feeling.    I felt nausea as I have before, but it was different somehow…I decided to rest for the evening and woke up the next morning feeling even worse.  I proceeded to do some work on my computer, hoping the symptoms would pass.  I told myself that I am strong and that I can endure any discomfort.  After about thirty minutes into my task, my heart began to speed up and the nausea intensified.  I felt a pain in my chest and dismissed it as heartburn or the like.  My heart rate increased and the beat was noticeably irregular – “I must have eaten something very bad,” I thought and decided to lie down for awhile.  Over the next few hours my heart slowed and then increased again – seemingly in an endless cycle.  I finally decided that my wife should drive me to the hospital – “maybe something is wrong.”

At the hospital, they hooked me up to wires and began the task of monitoring my heart.  During that time, my resting heat rate ranged from ninety to more than one hundred and thirty beats per second.  Very unlike me, I became very nervous about everything happening.  The doctored walked in and asked, “How are you doing?”  “I’m a bit wired,” I explained, trying to diffuse fear with humor while stretching out my arms with wires dangling.  In truth, I was concerned.  The doctor took my history and ordered a number of tests.  The hospital checked me in.  The next day, I heard words like murmur, leaky valve, tachycardia, and arrhythmia.  All of this was happening to me – the preeminent tough guy dissipated that day.  The cardiologist released me to rest at home and ordered me to follow-up with another visit in a couple days.   

I see this as a new start.  Being a private person, it is especially difficult for me to talk about my failing health.  I need to be strong and yet I find myself in a most compromised state.  Now I am ready to face it and unfortunately that strength is born of fear.  Part of me is tempted to gulp down a pitcher of raw eggs and jog down Main Street with my MP3 player blasting the Rocky theme.  I need that kind of determination, but the moment calls for a new calm determination that will guide me through the vast life-style changes that are required.

My journey has brought me to a most important crossroads.  From here on, I will hold myself accountable and document my progress on this post for all to see.  Hopefully this will benefit others.  I have questions to answer, difficult decisions to make, and I have changes to embrace.  I will address more of the story that has already transpired and discuss the various experiments in self-healing that I undertake.  Maybe the doctors will say that what I have endured over the last few years are a series of unfortunate and disconnected events.  Is that really true?  Others might say that I have been over-stressed.  If that is true, what is stress and what is the source of this stress?  I think we will discover that the answer is unexpected.  Welcome to my Journey; what happens next will surprise you…