Heart Disease - Own It!
The movie on TV was good enough to keep my interest. During the commercial, I went to the refrigerator to get something to munch on. As I sat back down, I felt what I thought was a little heartburn. I paid no attention to it and started to watch the TV again. It was then in an instant the heartburn turned into intense pain. I tried to ignore it but it was so intense and getting worse by the second. It was then my jaw began to hurt, then my arms. The pain was taking my breath away. Could it be?…..Was it?……..Yes, Oh My God! I was having a heart attack!
That night while lying in the hospital, I was thinking to myself, “how did I ever get here?” ”I was too young, wasn’t I?” There were so many things going through my mind. I really didn’t know what to think. I do remember this strong feeling of denial at first. I kept thinking to myself, “how could this have happened?” Maybe genetics? That’s it! I frantically tried to think of someone in the family with heart disease. Let’s see uhhhh…… I thought, and I thought, but there was nobody in my family who ever had heart disease. Well, it must have been the way I was raised then. The fact is, no, I didn’t have the best, most loving child life in the world, but how can that give you a heart attack at 56 yrs. old? OK, now I know. It was the stress I came under when I lost my job last year, and for a second there I really hated my old boss. Then I realized that many people have lost their jobs in the last year and they’re not dropping dead of heart attacks. So, what was it?
As the next few days went by, I had ample time to think about this question. Who did this to me? No matter where I tried to put the blame, it came back flawed. I was frantic to find ’someone’ or ’something’ to blame my condition on.
On the third morning of my hospital stay, I woke up from a nap with a tear in my eye and this really bad feeling in my gut. I must have had a dream I thought. A bad dream. As I started to remember the dream, I began to feel worse and more tears began to flow. I don’t really know if it was truly a dream or an epiphany, but I knew that feeling of sadness so well. It was in that instant, I realized who was responsible for what had happened to me. All this time I was looking for someone to point a finger at, and all I had to do was look in the mirror. It was me all along. It was me who smoked cigarettes all those years. Me who felt entitled to eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and yes, it was me who made the ‘decision’ to allow myself to become depressed and give up hope. I gained weight, became sedentary and got fat! My life was reduced to one “bad decision” after another, and yes, I do say decision!
I started this post a couple of months ago and I really didn’t know how to finish it, until yesterday. I was watching a new program on TV called the Dr. Oz show. The topic was ‘being overweight’. There was a gentleman on the program that was morbidly obese. He had a heart transplant two years ago. It really angered me to see this guy because rather than take this new opportunity at life, he has gained weight since the surgery! He weighs almost 500lbs.! Now, he’s crying on this show in front of the whole world that he can’t help himself. It is very difficult to feel any sympathy for this person. Many of us have lost loved ones in an instant with no chance to say goodbye. They’re just gone. I wish my dad had a second chance at life. The point I am trying to make here is this, whoever we are and whatever happens to us is a direct result of the decisions we make. If you make a bad decision, own it! It’s not because you’didn’t know. Sometime earlier, you made the decision to ‘not learn’. That’s why, ignorance of the law is no excuse. It’s our responsibility to learn . If you make a decision to ignore the fact that a bad diet is not good for you, then own the result. It’s not because you are bombarded by food commercials on T.V. It’s not because it’s ‘traditional’ to eat buttered popcorn when you go to the theatre. It’s because you ‘choose’ to abandon self control in these situations. The fact is, the more often you ‘choose’ to abandon self control, the easier it becomes to do so.
I do not want any sympathy from anybody. I chose my path many years ago and I own it! Fortunately, I have been given another chance at a healthy life and unlike the gentleman I saw on TV, I am choosing to make the best of that second chance. I kind of look at this issue like I would look at the issue of natural selection. Only the strong are supposed to survive! If you make a decision to walk in front of a bus and get killed, you have just demonstrated a flaw in common sense, you are supposed to die, scientifically speaking ,of course. This is how the species gets stronger and smarter, as generations pass. It has been that way since the beginning of time. It’s not my desire to reduce this issue of bad health decisions to natural selection, but it does seem to me that the rule applies here. Make bad decisions, get fat, have a heart attack, die. In addition to this consequence, you have just weakened your genetic signature. If you had children, you have just passed on those genetic traits to them. The tendency to make bad decisions is learned by the body genetically as well as what we see from our parents. Although it may be too late for me to change my genetic traits and improve my genetic heritage, I will continue to be a positive example to my children and grandchildren until the day I die, which I hope is far down the road.
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