The healthy wear a crown that only the sick can see.
A Yemeni doctor acquaintance of mine shared this resonantly profound Arabic proverb with me a few years ago, and boy is it true.
The last two months have been some of the scariest in my life. Short version: I had an "event" in my vision that my doctor thought was a TIA, which is a transient ischemic attack, also known as a fucking mini-stroke. Yes, you read that correctly. So I've spent the last two months taking a zillion tests, each one further confirming that I'm healthy but not quite checking all boxes, until I finally took the two most important ones yesterday and found out that I have no artery blockages in my head and neck and there is no residue from a stroke or stroke-like incident.
So I'm in the clear.
Oddly, the night that I had this "event" -- whatever it was -- was the night I graduated with my Master of Science in Publishing from Pace University. In the months and weeks prior to this event, I had been extremely stressed out trying to get it all done, all while working a gig as an AI editor at Google, which was as awful as it sounds, and also applying for another Master's program at NYU. I was in the gym every day, I was drinking too much to wind down at night, and I was completely overwhelmed. My blood pressure got so high I had to start taking medication for it and testing my BP at home (which always raised my BP so I have stopped doing that).
On the night I officially graduated, I was leaving a graduation party and had just walked out of the subway. As I turned on my street, I realized that the leaves had grown on the trees and I had missed them budding. I wondered, "When did the leaves come out on all the trees?" and just as I was admiring the nature I had been too busy to notice over the last few weeks, about 1/5 of my vision in both eyes went black, as if a curtain had been pulled over it. It only lasted a few seconds but it was really eerie.
The next day I Googled it and didn't like what I read so I emailed my doctor, the deeply patient and beautiful soul that is Dr. Jordan Coleman, and he contacted me immediately and told me what a TIA is -- and what the implications of this were.
It made sense that I would have something happen to me, in retrospect. I was burning it on both ends. So for the last two months I have been scared shitless that I had a mini-stroke, which is usually a precursor for a major one. Every day I woke up basically surprised I woke up. I dreamt of having a stroke many nights. The word "stroke" seemed to show up in everything I read or on every other ad or commercial. I started wondering what would be said of me in the Facebook RIPs. I spent a lot of time thinking about that.
I also spent a lot of time changing my lifestyle. I already work out lifting weights almost daily, but I rarely do any cardio beyond running errands around NYC on foot and the occasional jog through Central Park. And I mostly eat well. But, as those who know me know, I am a 51 year old man who loves potato chips, beer, and Marlboro Lights. Yes, I smoke. I love to smoke when I am drinking beer. And I love drinking beer.
So I started taking 10am cardio classes at my gym, ditched the smokes and the beer, and eliminated almost all traces of sodium from my diet for a month. I was irritable, angry, and bored out of my fucking mind. But I was alive. Even if I didn't feel like this was much of a life worth living. I realized that everything I liked was off limits. And yet, every day I saw people on the street who were strung out, smoking all kinds of things, or carrying an obese body and wondered how in the hell I of all people ended up having to worry about a goddamn stroke. I was angry at myself a little bit for having certain indulgences and angry at life in general for seeming to go by so quickly. How the fuck was I in my 50s taking blood pressure medication and worrying about dropping dead? I'm built like a brick shit house, I just banged some gorgeous 30 year old guy three times in a row, and I just graduated Magna Cum Laude from my Master's program. How could I possibly be this old???
The healthy wear a crown, indeed. I walked around for weeks in a sober, high-anxiety daze looking at other people who were happy and enjoying their summer and I was envious. I thought, on one of my zillion hospital visits over the last two months, how many times I'd passed Mt. Sinai and NYU Langone hospitals and never gave them a passing thought and now I was there for something it seemed like once a week.
And today I got the results from yesterday's head and neck MRA that I'm actually really healthy and whatever happened was probably just some strange visual fluke. I'm a little leery, but overall relieved that it wasn't my bullet this time. *Gulp*
Thank you to the few people I shared this with, especially my dear friend Jordan Coleman. You are the best doctor in the world and I am so dearly grateful for your friendship. Also, thank you to Amy Opperer Brode Josh Daitch and Erica Dennison Daitch and Ryan Kaluzny and Jennifer Tisdale Kaluzny and Naftali Goldsmith and LaShonda Steele Allen for letting me vent and, at times, completely freak out.
Now my summer has just begun.
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