Large Fierce Mammal

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My father was the oldest of seven children, and he, along with every one of his siblings, suffered from heart disease and high blood pressure. My father was diagnosed with angina when he was 40, and by the time he was 55  ended up with a triple bypass that saved his life and at last permanently changed the heavy smoking lifestyle of both of my parents after many years of unsuccessful fits and starts. His youngest brother had his first major heart attack before he was 30, and went on to be one of three in the family to die directly of a heart attack.

My mother’s side of the family was free of such spectres, but cognizant of the risk I faced as a genetic amalgam of both parents, and beginning with my first flight physical at the ripe old age of 16, I have paid attention to my cardiovascular health. As it turns out, in most ways ranging from height and physical appearance, stamina, cardiovascular health, libido, and even personal interests, my genetic makeup completely embraces the maternal side.

While there is undeniably a genetic component to the heart maladies afflicting my father’s family, it should not be ignored that if you listed every lifestyle choice guaranteed to elevate anyone’s risk of heart disease and stroke, you would end up with a template for my father’s family, embracing diet, heavy smoking, alcohol consumption, and the virtual absence of any meaningful and sustained cardiovascular exercise. In a family of six boys and one girl, every one was  energetic, motivated, trim of build, skilled at anything they turned their minds to, likeable, and anything but lazy, but creatures of a time when a cardiovascular workout was an accident of occupation. If one’s work is more about sedentary use of muscle than daily taxing of the heart and lungs, the ultimate outcome for my father and his siblings comes as no surprise.

I grew up a very active kid. After a winter of not riding my bicycle, I early on adopted a personal yardstick for my own strength and stamina employing a method that began as soon as bike riding season commenced. Growing up in the unforgivingly hilly town of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, in a house that lay adjacent to one of the town’s most challenging hills, there were three tiers of steep street that led from where the Lunenburg Public Library (then the liquor store) now lies, and the summit where one is deposited, ominously enough, at the edge of the Hillcrest Cemetery. I had learned from experience that even a winter of non-stop outdoor activity that included countless trudges up toboggan slopes, and slogging through deep snow on woodsy adventures, still left me ill equipped to ride my bicycle with the bottomless reserves of energy, strength, and panache of the summer previous. This would not do!

And so, at the beginning of the season I would negotiate all three tiers of that hill, from bottom to top, astride my sturdy old bike which was of the classic type with only one gear and that required a reverse pedal motion to engage the brake. In the beginning, I would zig zag to ease the labour of the climb and simply focus on completing the trip without stopping to rest. As days went on and that was achieved, I began work on being able to climb straight up the first tier before reverting to the easier zig zag manoeuvre. Before long, I arrived at my goal – straight up, non-stop, from bottom to top!

By the time I was in my teens, and even after obtaining a license to drive, I still walked every day for fun and meditation, preferring to conduct my business on foot when possible, and relentlessly exploring the woods and barren lands around Lunenburg.  While the boundaries and range of my explorations have broadened considerably since then, this is still a defining part of my nature to this very day, although my expeditions now enjoy the company of a woman of such quality as I had thought in my youth was only written of in romantic fantasy and joyously sung about in lusty ballads. Neither Mrs. LFM nor I smoke, but we thoroughly enjoy those vices we do have; and live, love, and laugh on the grandest scale we can possibly achieve – which is to say a level that would maim most regular people.

I speak of all this to illustrate the importance of actually living well, a simple thing that has become a nearly lost art that most people see as a system of  labours that must be juggled and managed if they are to have any chance of being healthy and happy and that is, in the end, a recipe for neither outcome. As I write, another generation of casualties is hunkered over gaming consoles guiding heroic warriors of unbelievable strength and vigour through the kind of adventures we used to call “imagination” and play out physically with wooden swords, and shields temporarily liberated from their mundane lives as garbage can lids. The abbreviations ADHD and OCD were not applied to children when I was still one of them, not because they had yet to be discovered, but because the human body is meant to be used in concert with the mind, and failure to do so comes at a price. Childhood sets the foundation of health in adulthood, and failure of parents to embrace and indelibly imprint that Truth on their offspring is to condemn them to unnecessarily abbreviated lives that will never be what they should have been.

I feel compelled to speak so passionately on this subject today because I had a personal experience this past week that illustrates the fundamental TRUTH of my argument.

About ten years ago, I had a cold that required the assistance of a cough remedy to get me through any endeavour that required speaking more than fifteen seconds without gagging to death. I was about to head out to a meeting so took my usual dose as directed, sat down at my computer to check e-mail one last time, and soon had a disconcerting experience – my chest suddenly felt filled with butterflies and my heart began beating in a bizarre and irregular rhythm that varied between heavy thumps and rapid, fluttery ticks.

I immediately picked up the phone and dialed my doctor’s office. When I explained what was going on I was told that my doctor would see me as soon as I could get there. The office was within a few minutes walking distance so I told my staff where I was going and headed out. Before I was half way there, the strange sensations stopped and my doctor’s examination turned up nothing abnormal. Nevertheless, he sent my to Fishermen’s Memorial Hospital for an ECG that likewise turned up nothing out of the ordinary so I was pronounced fit for duty, the unfortunate episode chalked up to a not unheard of but previously unprecedented reaction to chemicals in my cough medicine.

Now let’s come forward to the late evening of last Wednesday, 22 June 2011. It was time to retire for the night and, as usual, I made ready to take our dogs out for their last relief break of the day. It was as I descended the stairs to the first floor of our house that I suddenly became aware of exactly the same sensations as I previously described. No chest pain, no light headedness, no shortness of breath; just a disconcertingly erratic heart beat.

I determined to finish my task and, if afterward the symptoms persisted, head off with Mrs. LFM to the outpatient’s department of our local hospital. As it turned out, this is exactly what happened.

The time was after midnight and the triage nurse saw me immediately. Taking a look at the way my heart was beating and the fact that my heart rate was 110 beats per minute, she wasted no time asking Mrs. LFM to handle the paperwork while I was asked to follow her. I was soon hooked up to an array of instruments that checked my blood pressure automatically at preset intervals, had blood taken, provided a urine sample, and was given an ECG. The ER doctor came to ask some questions confirming what had been collected so far, and gave instructions for an IV drip to reduce my heart rate. I still had no other symptoms and the IV did its job, but the arrhythmia persisted and the attending physician decided it would be best for me to stay the night so my condition could be monitored, and await the pronouncements of the specialist doctor first thing in the morning.

Of necessity, Mrs. LFM could not stay with me, and I dozed off and on through the night, all too aware that she was spending her own night on one of the upper-mid levels of Hell. About 6:00 AM I texted her and found, not surprisingly, that she was awake. I gave her my own status update, which was little different than it had been when we last spoke, and told her I was still awaiting the specialist who, much to my joy, arrived not long after.

My symptoms were still the same – blood pressure absolutely normal, heart beat erratic with rate now oscillating between 80-90 BPM, but only kept that way by periodic infusions of chemical assistance. My blood and urine samples had been checked for everything that might indicate a serious health issue including kidney and liver function, cholesterol, electrolytes, blood sugar level, tox screen. Everything came back either completely normal or better than normal. Wonderful to learn, but yet, here I was.

In the absence of any other explanation, my doctor informed me that the symptoms I was experiencing were extremely common, and that they represented a major component of the patients he saw who came in with heart complaints. For some, there is a clear cause (as with my cough medicine problem a decade before), while for others it’s just one of those things.  Because I knew exactly when my problem began, so it was known with certainty that it had not persisted longer than 48 hours, he advised a Plan A/Plan B scenario. Plan A called for an IV drip that would, if successful, re-regulate my hear rate and I would be good to go. Failing that, he would knock me out for a few minutes and use a defibrillator to shock my heart back into normal rhythm.

So, after briefing Mrs. LFM on the plan, I got hooked up to the IV. The entire drip was supposed to take 30 minutes and, as I lay there waiting, in a state of mild annoyance at the way the vent in the ceiling tile I was looking at had been installed slightly askew, I could feel my heart begin going through what I can only describe as a scale of options, looking for one that fit. Then, at almost exactly 25 minutes into the process, everything clicked and I was cured! I waited 5 minutes before saying anything so as not to queer the deal, and then texted Mrs. LFM to give her the news. She was actually on her way, and was needless to say, very happy for the outcome.

Followup blood tests confirmed the first results – I am healthy beyond even my expectations, and I was released late Thursday morning with advice to keep doing what I’m doing. No problems there mate.

Friday, I took Mrs. LFM and our best canoe dog Robbie, on a water excursion on Kejimkujik Lake in Kejimkujik National Park. We did some vigorous paddling through wind and wave, picnicked on an island, and I took time to revel in the powerfully rhythmic beating of my heart as I admired Mrs. LFM in the joyous knowledge that it beats only for her.

Robbie may be looking a little uncertain in this over the shoulder shot taken Friday afternoon by Mrs. LFM, but I'm feeling the Joy of Life!