Suicide by Salt

I wrote this the last time I went into the hospital via the emergency room. It is a repost in honor of "Go Red for Heart Disease" month

"Suicide by Salt" that was a joke I made Saturday night at work as I munched on a 99 cent bag of Doritos with a friend. We both chortled happily and continued to enjoy our snacks. I had suspended my diet for the Superbowl and I was determined enjoy that bag of Doritos. I had been craving it for a couple of months.

Saturday night after work was a different story.

I woke up in the middle of a very good dream and my heart was going crazy. It felt like it was skidding to a complete stop and then jump starting again. This feeling is not unfamiliar to me and I wasn't too worried. Then it got worse. Then the chest pain started and just to make sure that I took note of what was happenning I started to get nauseous. None of this is pleasant to experience of course, but I was determined to ignore it and get back to my dream. Then the shortness of breath started. Shortness of breath is impossible to ignore - especially when you're wearing a C-pap machine and air is being forced down your throat!

It was at this point that I knew that I had to go the the ER and I started apologizing to God for misbehaving with the Doritos and promising to never be so stupid again if he would just let me live!

I went to the emergency room. As usual they took one look at me and moved me to the head of the line. When they checked my initial blood pressure it was 195 over 115 and my heart rate was well over 100. Fortunately things started to settle down soon after that and a couple of hours later I was hopeful they would send me home. I went in at 1 am and at 7 am they told me they were going to keep me.

When I saw my dr. he wanted to know what happenned and I told him. I also told him that I had cut my medicine in half starting January 13th. and I promised him that I would take it faithfully as I have for the past year and a half if he would just send me home. He pointed out that I didn't saved any money because now I have a massive hospital bill to pay. At least he did agree to send me home though because it was obvious what caused the problem to begin with.

Now I am weak again. I am on O2 most of the day again. It will take me at least a month to get to where I can function at a level where I can pretend to be normal again. I had a good run for about 6 weeks. Now I have to start over and build up again.

I'm really sick of this shit, but I have nobody to blame but myself!