Good Lifestyle

Imagine a typical summer day. The sun shines, the birds sing, and you make you aware of feeling grateful for a life filled with family and friends, creative points of view and work you find satisfied. For me, June 12, 2014 started as one of those almostGood days.

I headed for the gym for one of my six workouts a week. I used the treadmill, cycling, elliptical machines and weight to mop the stress,Cut corporealand build muscles. While sweat flowed from my pores and my heart rate got up, I remember feeling proud that, like a 55-year-old woman working hard, I could stayPhysically active.

At the time, I was working as a dependency counselor in a downside of drugs and ambulatory alcohol, returning home to do my job as a journalist, teaching courses and workshops, and serving as Minister Interface. At the moment my head fell on the pillowevery night, I had caused 12 to 14 hours of work, which leftFive to six hours to sleep Before you wake up to repeat the cycle.

As a semi-vegetarian, I thought I was eating healthy. And although I was not a caffeine cap, I would like to get off a Chai a few times a week and the cushion hunt from time to time when my blanting eyes could stay open for a moment longer.

But my go-go-and-go attitude - more - more was not just due to beingoverworked. In 1998, I became a40 year old widow with a 11 year old son to lift. A decade later, I became an "adult orphan" when my father died in 2008 and my mother joined him two years later. I tried to remember what my sage father used to say, "You never know what tomorrow brings." And my mother just as astucite would offer what I called her "attitude will be" while she has channeled her bestDoris day And told me, "What will be it will." So, I continued to keep, but I did not leave room for active grief on the losses I had suffered.

All this has defined the scene for what happened on the way to the gym of the gym on this picturesque day of June.

I drove to familiar roads when I startedexperiment Torrential sweatshirts, vertigo, burnsstomach pains, nausea and a feeling that someone had grabbed my jaw and he became motionless. Call the intuition combined with education, but I immediately knew that I had a heart attack.Unlike usual symptoms in menThere was no capture my left arm, no chest pain and no loss of consciousness, but I lost common sense.

Rather than doing what I would have advised anyone to do (pull yourself and call 911), I drove at home, canceled an appointment with a customer and after a fleeting thought that I should have Myself myself in the shower, I decided to drive to the emergency 10 minutes (a choice that I fear in the deprivation of oxygen).

I stumbled through the door of the hospital and said to the woman behind the office: "I think I have aheart attack. "

In the moments, I was whipped by a wheelchair and I am prepared for a stent to be inserted in my heart to hang a completely occluded artery. I remember thinking, "I can not miss work. I need this income." I took care of myself financially since my husband died 15 years earlier - yet, even at that time, I was worried about anything butmy health.

I also remember theNurse preparing me For the possibility of having to have the stent threaded through the groin rather than the wrist (the first is the traditional approach). "You'll hate me, but I'm not going to shave on one side," she said. I asked if she could do a "landing strip" instead, and we both burst into laughter. (Laughter is definitely the best form of medicineeven when you have a heart attack.)

Fortunately, it was not necessary, and today I am grateful that the pine in my right wrist is what remains, with this extra part of my heart that makes me think of myself as the bionic woman. My surgeon showed me what my completely occlus artery looked like a pre-stent (a broken and curved tree branch), then post-stent (thus supporting blood so that the blood can flow normally). He warned me not to let him reproduce.

By recovering, I was reminded by the staff of the hospital, family and friends a majorRevision of the lifestyle was in order. It turned out that my predisposition family (my mother died of congestive heart failure and my sister had had two heart attacks), a diet andsleep-wake imbalance lent to this inevitable result. Apparently, working 14 hours a day, sleeping for five hours and living pre-packaged cholesterol and sodium foods would not serve me well.

My personal support system stirred their collective fingers in the direction because they told me that I had to slow down considerably and stop taking care of everyone at my own expense. I realized at that moment that I had an active dependency: I was a type A + Overachievingworkaholic Who thought he had prospered on the activity, but instead, suffered almost non-stop envy to continue moving his true emotions to catch up.

The idea of ​​taking the two weeks of work that my doctor suggested pushing the reset button frankly scared the shit of me.Cure looked like a job. I could hardly take a step without making a canvas. It was as if my lungs were a collapsed accordion to grow. I found myself lying on the couch, looking at the ceiling fan turning and wondering if I would return to my endurance.

I was afraid, no death, but of a disability, so that other people should take care of me. I could not imagine a reversal of dramatic role. I had turned from Wonder Woman to the bionic woman, but who would I be if I were not the consummated caregiver of everyone?

While engaging in an indispensable introspection, I came to realize that I did not allow myself the freedom to cry my cumulative losses, simplyto be instead of beingtoAnd honor my own heart as I made the hearts of others. My long-standing friend Barb, who has known me since we had 14 years, called me on my behavior as a friend can. "You call yourself a woman of integrity but you have beenbinder"She says." Whenever you say that you will slow down and you do not get lost, you lose credibility with yourself. I had to admit reluctantly that she had on the spot.

In addition to working on mymental well-being, I spent several months in medically supervised cardiac detoxification. Finally, I started a new and less stressful work as a written journalist on well-being, mental health and addiction. I changed diet and exercise routines in progress and I startednapper, who would have had the impression of an early attack of the decadent indulgence.

Five years later, I still work in many capacities: see customers in a slower rhythmic therapy practice and teaching courses, but significantly reducing schedules.

Every June 12, I make sure to celebrate my "Cardows" happily and spread this joy via theFree Hug Flashmobs I started doing in 2014. I walk in the region of Philadelphia, where I live, offering to kiss anyone who needs, people in homeless shelters to Vietnam veterinarians at train stations. They smile, laugh and cry sometimes when we served. My goal is to give them something conscious and concrete to do when they feel powerless to make a positive change in the world.

And frankly, I do it too for me too. It would help me feel more connected to the world around me (and brought me to Washington, D.C. New York; Portland, Oregon; and even Ireland). When I kissed around the world, I'm not just the donor, but also the recipient. Because in the years, since my heart attack, I learned the importance of taking care of my physical and emotional heart, just as I would encourage others to do.

I say that the woman I was daded on June 12, 2014 to give birth to the one who taps these words. She had, since she kills me.

And if you want to know the signs of a heart attack to protect you,These are the signs of heart attack warning that hide with a view to view.

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