I Should Have Known Better

Chapter V - Taking the Bait

Turning seventy was a big emotional event for me. When I was in my sixties I felt newly retired, full of energy, and having loads of fun. But seventy crept up on me and all of a sudden it sounded very old. Much much older than sixty-nine. I used to go to dances which were full of young people with pounding rock music, and I felt quite at home. Suddenly being seventy seemed way out of place to be on the dance floor.

I was adjusting to my new age when one night while I was trying to go to sleep my heart started pounding. Really pounding hard. Thump Thump Thump. Like someone was jumping on my chest. I had had an irregular heart beat from time to time over the years but more like a flutter for a few seconds. A few months before I was a bit concerned about the flutter so I cut down on coffee on the advice of "GOOGLE".

I must explain that I am not a big fan of the medical system. I used to say, "the only time you go to a doctor was when you had a knife sticking out of your back and you didn't have a friend to pull it out". It was a joke but it got the point across. Doctors can only do two things for you; medicate or operate. I know there is a time and place for these, but I always believed that the emphasis should be on prevention and not the cure.

I have avoided almost all types of medication and only have a family doctor in case I need one someday. The few times I have gone for a checkup they try to get me to go on some trial program or other because I am in a risk group. I have had injuries like spikes through my work boots and torn knee ligaments where I had to have medical professional help which I greatly appreciated.

When I fell out of my barn loft onto the cement floor and was taken to the hospital emergency, I was a week recovering very painfully and slowly. At the follow-up doctors appointment I was asked what medication I was taking, I answered, "none".

He just turned away from his computer and looked over the rim of his glasses at me and said, "Stoic"

I would rather suffer some pain and tough it out rather than be medicated. At least I can feel where the problems are and avoid any further damage.

I liked coffee and I hadn't been ready to give it up completely. But this night the heart pounding wasn't stopping and I debated whether to go to the hospital at eleven o'clock at night or wait until morning. I finally went to sleep but work up with my heart still pounding. By morning it was back to normal and then I was fearful of going to a doctor only to be told I had a serious heart problem. So I devised a plan which was to research this some more and take whatever steps I could on my own before consulting a doctor.

I determined that all coffee, chocolate, and alcohol had to go. They were all stimulants. I love chocolate and I liked drinking beer, wine, and mezcal, but my health and my heart were much more important. I kept my fitness routine as before. It all seemed to work. At least I didn't have a recurrence of the heart pounding, just the odd flutter as before.

A few months passed and I felt comfortable enough to call a friend who was a cardiologist. He drove over in the next hour and made an appointment for me to be fitted with a Holter Monitor for forty-eight hours.

When he said, "do whatever you can to get your heart to act up".

I said, "that's going to be easy, I'll just drink coffee, booze, and eat chocolate"

It didn't work. After forty-eight hours there wasn't any unusual events recorded.

Then many weeks later I called again because the irregular heart was back, so I got to wear the monitor a second time. When I got the results, my cardiologist told me that what I had was very common in older people and it is nothing to worry about. I left his office a very happy man and haven't worried about it since.