I AM NOT A HYSTERICAL PERSON, MA'AM

The other night I was texting with my older sister when I sent this one around 9:35 PM:

Alright, I’m going to bed.  I’m not feeling well.

She latched onto that pretty quickly. First off, I’m a night owl so going to bed at 9:35 PM, even though I wake up every morning at 5, is unheard of for me.  Second, I hardly ever get sick.  I attribute that at least in part to my immune system being so strong because I’m like a goat—I’ll eat anything*—and my body has had to learn to overcome the challenges I’ve thrown at it.  (For more tips on how to maintain a healthy, balanced existence, subscribe to my life coaching page, linked at the bottom of this post.)

What do you mean, not feeling well?  What are your symptoms?

My sister fancies herself a nurse, so as I began to explain how I’d been feeling lately—light-headedness, shortness of breath, body really heavy, heart pounding hard like it’s working overtime, not being able to finish a workout—she told me, with very alarming text effects, that

YOU ARE HAVING A STROKE.  CALL YOUR DOCTOR IMMEDIATELY!!!!!!!

I have been on blood pressure medication since I was around 20 years old. Back then, I had a very understanding doctor who told me it was my hard living causing it and that she would just put me on pills until I decided to stop drinking a case of beer and smoking a pack of cigarettes every night.

But when I did decide to stop—or at least cut back a ton as one does as she grows into a mature, responsible adult—my blood pressure stayed high. 

So here we had all been, victim shaming me for my habits, when really, high blood pressure was just something God had decided to give me to keep me humble.  I have it all, you see—I’m what some might call a "tall drink of water” and I’m smart and witty, too—so He had to give me something to keep me down to earth; grounded, one might say.

Anyway, my high blood pressure is well documented and no surprise to anyone in my family, and besides, I’m great about taking my daily pill and keeping track of it.  Still, my sister worries about it and checks up on me sometimes (like she did on this night), and she said that what stuck out at her and kind of scared her was the “not being able to finish a workout” part.

Listen, I might be really pasty and slightly obese with a face that sometimes gets so bloated from salt intake that people mistake me for a late 1970’s Elvis (I mean, just on my “off” days when I more resemble a short cup of mayonnaise than a tall drink of water; we all have those days, get off my back), but I have worked out pretty much every single day of my life since I was 19 years old and wanted to drop the freshman fifteen, and I never—EVER—don’t finish a workout.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is really good for some things.

But early last week, my older son walked by me at the gym as I was stair stepping, and what he saw when he looked up at me was enough to make him pause and move his headphones off of his ears. “You okay, Mom?”

He had a teasing smile on his face, but underneath it, I could see the concern.  I was only 15 minutes into the regular 30 minutes I spend on that particular machine and my entire tank top was wet with sweat.  And I was only on level 5 when normally I step at level 10.

“I don’t know,” I choked out.  “I think I might have to stop.”

His eyes widened.   I carried him for 9.5 months in my womb and he’s known me in person since the moment he slid out of my birth canal and gazed up at me adoringly (he’s adopted, but whatever, this is my story and I can tell it how I want), and again, I have never quit a workout or even slowed to a walk for a few seconds of my regular 6-mile runs.

Even that one time when he was about 5 years old, eating a piece of bacon on the couch while watching me do a Jillian Michaels workout.  “You must do like 100 squats a day,” he mused aloud, “but you’re still fat.”

My son is amazing—both of my kids are—and I promise you he wasn’t being a brat.  He was just puzzling something out and hadn’t yet learned when it’s more appropriate to do that sort of thing in your own head instead of vocally.

But even then, even way back then when my son so innocently stated the obvious and I wanted to pause the workout so that I could crumple to the floor and sob, I did not.  I kept on squatting and jumping LIKE A BOSS.

A fat boss, but still.  A boss.

Anyway, I went back to the gym the next day with a plan:  I was going to do the exact same workout—30 minutes on the stair stepper followed by a mile jog—and finish it this time so that I could prove to myself that the day before had just been an off day and I’ve still got this.

But I didn’t have it.  I didn’t have it at all.  I had to stop again.

So my sister was concerned. 

And her concern was kind of contagious, so then I got concerned. 

I guess “concerned” is one way of putting it.

“Hey, guys,” I said to my boys after I had rushed to my bathroom that evening, mid-text convo with my sister, to pop a baby aspirin and an extra blood pressure pill.  (I have learned from my doctor that I probably shouldn’t have done this without asking her, so please don’t mistake any portion of this story as sound medical advice).  “I might have a stroke and die tonight, so let’s share a couple of hugs and maybe talk about some fun memories.”

They were both at the kitchen island scrolling on their phones.  They looked up at me, and I could tell they weren’t sure if they should take me seriously or not.  I’m always saying stupid stuff.

“I mean, I’ll probably be fine,” I said, not wanting to scare them.  “But in case I’m not, let’s share a couple of hugs and talk about some fun memories.”

They opted out of the “fun memories” part, but they did both give me hugs and to their credit, neither rolled his eyes as he did so. I took the opportunity to remind them that if I were to stroke out and die in the middle of the night and if their dad ever got another girlfriend, they were to be really mean to her, never call her mom, and to check the will often because women are nasty, NASTY people and she might try to steal their rightful inheritance.

I’ve raised them on Dateline, so they knew what I was talking about.  They nodded wisely and assured me they had it covered.

The next morning, I did something else that I never, ever do: I took the day off work so I could try to get a last-minute appointment with my doctor.

But my doctor’s office wasn’t taking it as seriously as I was.  When they told me they could get me in for a checkup on July 2—a month and a half away—"I said, “Well, what would you like me to do until then?  Die?”

The nurse on the phone said she’d check to see if they had a closer date, and she promised to get back to me soon.  She called back about a half hour later with a new date—two days from then.

“LISTEN, MA’AM, I AM NOT A HYSTERICAL PERSON,” I said, and I wondered why my voice came out all high and, well, hysterical-sounding. The rest of the conversation is kind of a blur, but I do remember that it ended with her telling me that was the best she could do and then saying, “Maybe you should go to the emergency room?”

Ugh.  As if anybody has time for that nonsense.  I explained to her that this was the first day I had called into work in like 2 years.  Did she really think I was going to waste it at the emergency room?

When I finally found my blood pressure cuff that afternoon and was able to take a reading, it was…surprisingly normal.  Lower, even, than it had been in years.  And this was a full 15 hours after I had taken my last blood pressure pill.

Hm.

So maybe I had just been a little more stressed out than normal, and that was causing all of my issues?  Weird.

When I went back to work the next day, my students greeted me with huge smiles and hugs.  “You NEVER miss school!” they kept saying.  “We literally thought you were dead!”

“And so you just came into school this morning all normal-like, thinking I was dead?  Just woke up like usual, had your cereal, and got dropped off like any other Wednesday, all the while thinking I was dead?  None of you are even crying,” I pointed out.

“What we’re trying to say is that we’re happy to see you,” they insisted, rolling their eyes.

Whatever.

I teach in a Catholic school and we have children’s Mass every Wednesday and Friday.  When we walked over to the church, I saw our former principal, a Deacon with whom I’m still very close.  I caught him and his wife at the door.

“I had to take off yesterday because I almost had a stroke,” I whispered.  He gets it; he has high blood pressure, too.

He and his wife both enveloped me in a big group hug, and when we all pulled away, his wife said, “Oh my goodness, that’s so scary!”

I raised eyebrows quite seriously and nodded.

“What was your reading?” he asked.

“Oh, I didn’t take it while I was stroking out.  I couldn’t find my blood pressure cuff.”

“Okay…” he said. “But you’re sure you were on the verge of a stroke?”

“I mean, pretty sure,” I said, nodding vigorously. “Like, I know the signs and they were all there.  When you’ve dealt with high blood pressure for as long as you and I have, you just know.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, taking his wife by the elbow as they began to find their pew. “Well…I’m glad you’re okay.”

It was only a couple of hours later at the end-of-the-schoolyear luncheon that I began to wonder if I had perhaps…slightly overreacted.  Our secretary ran up to me.  “Tell me EVERYTHING,” she said breathlessly.  “Were you slurring your words?  Was your smile lopsided? Could you not lift both arms over your head?”

I hesitated for a moment.  Something was beginning to dawn on me, and it was making me uncomfortable. “Um, well, I did all of those little stroke tests and passed easily.”  Perhaps I hadn’t been as close as I’d thought to having a stroke.  Maybe I had been a tad on the dramatic side, which, to my credit, hardly ever happens.  Which is why people take it so seriously when it does.

I used to have this distant cousin who was way older than me.  (RIP, distant cousin.) I think she was actually my dad’s first cousin.  She was the type who would sob so hard at funerals—even if she hardly knew the person who died—that she would have to be picked up from the floor and whisked away, a big strong Polish cousin under each of her shoulders as support.  My dad would always roll his eyes and mutter “What a showboat” out of the side of his mouth.

A friend of mine once dated a guy that I did not like.  It was nothing I could put my finger on until one night, another friend and I met up with them at a bar for some St. Patrick’s Day festivities.  When we walked in, we saw the boyfriend all glitzed out with spraypainted green sparkly hair, lime green feather boas flung around his neck. 

He was dancing on the bar.  A 40-year-old man with sparkly green hair and boas dancing on a bar in a college town.

My friend leaned over to yell into my ear over the music.  “A bit of a peacock, isn’t he?”

YES!  THAT’S what it was!  She had hit the nail on the head with that simple sentence. He was an attention-seeking dork and that’s what I didn’t like about him.

With all of this stroke business…was I being a showboat?  Even worse…a peacock?

I swear I hadn’t meant to be, but truly, if I had tailfeathers, they’d have been all fanned out by now, my milkshake bringing all the boys to the yard.

The secretary was disappointed.  She loves a good juicy bit of gossip, you see, and it was quickly becoming obvious that my “stroke” had been a false alarm and she was going to have to go back and tell all of her friends that I was fine.

I gave her a consoling pat on the back as she walked away, her shoulders slumped in defeat. I mean, I thank God that I hadn’t actually had a stroke, but it always sucks to let someone down.

 

*One of my favorite stories to regale my students with is the chicken nugget story, in which I was cleaning my kids’ playroom about 13 years ago and stumbled upon a McDonald’s Chicken McNugget in the plastic kitchenette my dad had bought my older son for Christmas.

The nugget was the handle-shaped kind, my favorite of the three variations of McDonald’s nugget shapes because they’re perfect for dipping.

I knew it had to be at least 2 weeks old because that was the last time we had gone to McDonald’s.  But it still looked really good.  I need to find out what preservatives McDonald’s uses in their food because honestly, based on the nugget that I held in my hand that day 13 years ago, their stuff doesn’t die and I’d like to sprinkle some of whatever was in it on the food on my prepper shelf.

I wish I could say I saved the nugget as a sort of science experiment to see how long it actually would last, but I didn’t.  Instead, I popped it into my mouth.

It had a little bite taken out of it and the edges were still soft from old saliva, but it was my kid’s, so it didn’t bother me. It’s not like I was snarfing some random stranger’s spit-soaked Chicken McNugget, you know what I mean?

When I tell the story to my students, I tell them my only regret is that I didn’t take the time to dip the nugget into some ranch first.  It was good, but ranch would have made it even better.