Why do you go to the gym? Or why is it that you’d like to start getting in shape? Before last week, I might have said it’s the health benefits. But why did I really want to hit the gym? I wanted to be 6 feet, 5 inches of twisted steel and sex appeal. Yep, I wanted to be that guy, the one wives and girlfriends sighed over and husbands/boyfriends made disparaging comments about because they didn’t quite stack up. Dreams of running miles before breakfast and getting honked at while doing so – yep, that was me.

REALITY CHECK…

So there I was, just another Thursday in my cube. Around 11:30, I noticed my chest was starting to hurt. Thinking nothing of it, I moved on.

12:15: Chest is hurting badly now and I can’t catch my breath. I tell my boss that if I’m not feeling better by 1:00, I might go to the doctor.

1:00: I can’t breathe. I feel like Rosie O’Donnell is pogo-sticking on my chest and I’m sweating like a pig. Boss tells me to get to the doctor.

Driving to the hospital,  I was thinking to myself that this could be it. I know that at 32 I don’t fit into the age bracket, but I’m a recently-former smoker, obese, and I have a family history of heart issues. I’m scared. I start to think about my girls and my wife and what they would have to do without me around. I start to worry that if I get really bad, I’ll crash my car and hurt someone else, but mostly I worry about not looking into the three most beautiful pairs of blue eyes in all the world again.

I pull into the Wesley Emergency Room’s parking lot and sit and wait will two huge SUVs jockey for a parking spot. I think to myself, “I always knew those things would kill us. I just never figured it would be this directly.” I finally find a parking spot and walk – no, stagger – to the front door under the watchful eye of a few Sedgwick County EMS members. I lean on the front desk and manage to tell the girl behind the counter, “Chest hurts and I can’t breathe.”

I can’t tell you everything that happened in the next 30 minutes. Several people were asking questions and poking and prodding me. EKG’s and blood tests all happened in seconds. The Wesley team was flawless. The nurses, doctors and the nurse practitioner were amazing, a perfectly oiled group of professionals. Even in my discomfort they were kind, humorous and explained everything that was happening as it happened. The nurse practitioner diagnosed me, thankfully, as not having any heart issues, but that the problem probably was with my stomach or gall bladder. She said that she was going to give me something to drink that was “nasty” but that it would make me feel better. Jennifer, a WSU student nurse, brought the drink to me later and reaffirmed that it was gross. She smiled at me and said, “It’s just a shot, just shoot it like your buddy bought it for you.” They were right; it was nasty, made my tongue numb, and made me feel better within minutes.

I did a lot of really stupid stuff on this Thursday. I should have been more aware of the warning signs of a heart attack. I should have gone to the ER much sooner than I did. The first minutes after a heart attack are by far the most important to survival. I should not have driven myself. If my condition had deteriorated, I might have hurt someone else.

Thankfully it wasn’t a heart attack or anything terribly serious, but it did make me think. There’s a reason that you drag your tired butt to Shocker Fitness at O dark hundred, there’s a reason that you go to the gym after you’ve worked all day and made dinner and helped with homework or whatever it is, there’s a reason that you crawl out of your warm bed and run out into the darkness.

So no longer am I going to worry about the look of my body but really start to focus on the workings of my body. I’ve got lots of good reasons – family, friends, the good people who spend their valuable time reading my articles.

Related posts:

1. [move] ‘Til I Collapse: Week One
2. [move] Running Just As Fast As I Can: The Finale
3. [move] ‘Til I Collapse: Week 2
4. [move] Get Walking for a Good Cause
5. [move] Work Out at a Wichita Gym