When someone gets out of a sticky situation, it’s said he’s dodged a bullet. Obviously, it’s a metaphor; not many of us actually avoid a round of ammunition fired in anger or even by accident. I have, but that’s another story. While most of these figurative bullets are external, the one I’m going to tell you about was just the opposite and a sticky situation in the most literal sense of the term.
The question of where to begin is tricky. I’d tried over the last few years to live a healthy life: no fried foods, reduced fat intake, making fresh fruit and vegetable juice every morning, hiking in the winter, and cycling in the summer. I never smoked. I’m twenty pounds lighter than I was the day I got married and in perfect health, or so I thought.
Could it have been the result of a youth ingesting tons of fast food or the downing of thousands of gallons of RC, Coke, and Pepsi infused with high-fructose corn syrup over a span of forty years? Maybe it was an unfortunate convergence of DNA from two very healthy parents who lived into their 80's and 90's despite years of drinking, smoking, and eating red meat while never getting any regular exercise. The culprit could be the stress of trying to keep a small business afloat in these troubled times. A case could be made for just about anything.
I’ll probably never know the cause but the result soon became obvious. For the purpose of this story I’ll begin on the eighth of June, 2011.
That Wednesday was my first bike ride of the year. It had been a very wet spring and my day off from work had finally aligned with some good cycling weather. As I pedaled down the Illinois and Michigan Canal Trail in Willow Springs, a relatively flat course of 12 miles over two loops connected by a straightaway, I noticed an unusual pain in my jaw. I chalked it up to the stress of my first ride of the year and being out of shape. Subsequent rides, more challenging, made the pain worse. My usual Sunday morning ride has a long hill about a quarter mile from home. I’ve climbed it with ease every summer for the last thirty-four years but this year it was different. I could still make it easily but the pain began in my jaw as usual and migrated to my chest. My breathing was labored and I felt clammy but wasn’t sweating.
I did this ride three times this summer. Each time I topped the hill I thought of tuning around, but once my pulse settled down I was able to complete the eleven-mile ride pain free even though there were some steeper hills along the way.
During this time the pain started happening on some mornings when I wasn’t cycling. Then it happened every morning. Sometimes it was a twinge in the jaw. Other times it went to the chest with that clammy feeling and irregular heartbeats. These spells could last just minutes or go on for an hour or more. I chalked it up to the unusual heat we had in July.
“Yeah, that’s it Gotta be something to do with the heat and my allergies. Our central air conditioning isn’t working and we sleep in a bedroom with a window air conditioning unit. This happens only when I come out of the cold and into the heat. Yeah, gotta be it. Besides, it never happens after noon anyway. Can’t be anything serious.” Two words: yeah, right.
I’m a volunteer with our town’s emergency management agency where we maintain a regular training schedule throughout the year. Fortunately for me, first aid was on the schedule for July. We learned how to handle everything from minor cuts and scrapes to strokes, seizures, and heart attacks. I didn’t hear anything after our instructor, a paramedic who’s seen it all, went into graphic detail on that last subject. Pain in the jaw was one of the symptoms. This ass got jawboned right upside the head.
Deep down inside I knew exactly what was happening but it took another bike ride on a cool morning to finally get me to face the fact that this wasn’t going to go away. I’d spent years avoiding the doctor but the time had come to swallow my pride and make the call.
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