To recap: I woke up with some tightness in my chest. It felt like sore ribs, something I get all the time from swimming, and since I had recently picked things back up in the pool, I chalked it up to the swimming.
Met Ham @ 5:45 and we were running by 5:50. Chest felt the same at the start, but after 3 miles the deeper breaths led to sharper pains. I stopped at the Montesorri School to try and stretch my chest out. In hindsight, this was pretty ridiculous, you can't stretch your heart (or foam roller....or The Stick....). The 7 miler was turned to 6.2 (the shortest way back), and concluded with a run/walk up DFT. Felt better once I stopped, Mike postulated it could be acid reflux so I went to the store to get some medicine for that....dropped my medicine in the parking lot....got majorly light-headed standing back up. Drive home, try to plead to Andrea that I'm fine....she did the smart thing, and I was in the ER.
FUN TIP: If you are tired of waiting...just say you have chest pain. Seriosuly, they take you right away. I don't care if you have an earache or your femur is snapped in half, the magic words are apparently "I have chest pain.". I think I got in ahead of people who were bleeding.
So, I still thought things weren't a big deal. Even though my resting heartrate was 120, and I had wires stuck to me, I was still holding onto hope that I was going to run 20 miles with Diane the next day. Then I got the news I was spending the night...then I got the news of 2 weeks of nothing. Nothing. Nothing that would raise my heart rate. The hardest effort I engaged in was carrying fast food back to my house, and I collected 10 lbs over those two weeks off as proof. Acute pericarditis was the official diagnosis. My cardiologist (still feels weird to say/write that) had me ease back in, but after 2 weeks stated "my heart looks excellent."
Yes this is old news (Charleston Marathon is older...and I never got around to that...) however I wanted to re-cap this, since I get asked about it often, but more over for the following reason.
2 weeks off and I really missed running. Obviously. However, I kinda turned a slight bit bitter towards some who were still running. Mainly, I was getting testy at reading (paraphrased) Facebook posts that to me, lacked a view of the bigger picture. I would read "just not feeling it on the run today", "these new socks really don't fit right...what a terrible run", and my mind reacted with "AT LEAST YOU CAN RUN!".
The same time my mind chimed with silent commentary, there was something else going on. People were telling me that I was lucky that it wasn't worse....that it wasn't a heart attack. I started out dismissing that notion (or having a better viewpoint) initially, still bummed I couldn't run, but then I recognized the voice. The same voice I had in my head that was demanding perspective from others, was somehow unwilling to grant myself the same viewpoint. I had drawn the line for maintaining perspective directly under my feet, and initially missed what others were saying.
I think I am always going to be caught somewhere in between.....not able to say "at least I have my health" if someone stole my car, but not quite to the level of "this sandwich isn't cut right, everything is terrible." Perspective will likely always be a struggle, but it was certainly a lesson well learned this time, and hopefully it sticks.
