Heart attack

I said yesterday that I would talk about this wellness test I took in order to get a discount on health insurance and I considered blowing it off like Arrested Development always blew off their "On the next Arrested Development" segments by never, ever addressing anything they mentioned in their epilogue from the previous episode.

God I miss that show.

But, I want to brag. Evidently, I'm 94% healthy, according to a completely arbitrary insurance quiz that relies 100% on my honesty. Not incidentally, my scores were low on the things I already know I need to improve, like my blood pressure, my alcohol consumption, my eating habits, and my weight. And, it indicated that I really should have my cholesterol and blood sugar checked. And maybe consider a mammogram. Well, duh. I'm over 40.

This reminds me, of course, of the other night. I had terrible, terrible heartburn all day long. It was the worst! I took some Prevacid (we have it on hand for our dog who suffers from acid reflux...yeah... I know...) and that didn't help it one bit. Then, as I was making dinner, I got this terrible pain in my right arm. It hurt so much, I simply hugged it against my body and stood still. Jesus. Wow. It was like my arm was breaking from shoulder to wrist.

Naturally, I put dinner on hold and hopped on the great Interwebs. A Google search on "pain in right arm" brought me here:

I was thinking my search would lead me to a carpal tunnel page or talk about not eating enough kale or something. But, heart attack??! Whaaat??

You want to know another symptom? Heartburn.

Mm-hm.

So, at that point, I was staring at the computer, clicking all these testimonials about women in their early 40s suffered heart attacks that started with heartburn, pain in their right arms, upper back pain (uh, yeah...check!), weird heart palpitations (uh huh), and extreme fatigue (totally).

Groom walked into my office, looked at my face, and slowly sat down. Not a word.

I stated in no uncertain terms that I thought I might be having a heart attack. He waited a beat before saying in his insanely calm and reasonable voice.

"Would you like me to call 911?"

"Nooo....."

"Should we get in the truck and drive to the hospital?"

"Nooo...."

"Want me to make some dinner?"

"Yeaaa....."

The next morning, which was yesterday morning, he announced with pure delight that it looked as though I had made it through the night without any 1am visits to the emergency room! Look at that!

That's when he told me what he thought was really happening. We had sausage with dinner the other night and I had some of the leftover sausage for lunch. Heartburn.

I worked my arms on the elliptical and probably pulled a muscle or pinched a nerve. Pain in right arm. Pain in upper back.

This next one is a bit harder to explain, so bear with me. We're having our kitchen remodeled and the amazing Nate Schrock just removed an entire wall from our house. The project is well underway and we can see some real changes. This means it is going to happen. My philosophy in life includes a belief that nothing great comes without great cost and if I look forward to something it will probably never happen. In the case of the kitchen, since it's clearly going to happen, that means something bad will probably happen to me to A) force me to pay a great cost for something so awesome or B) make it so I never see the kitchen come to fruition. When I stood in the middle of the kitchen, my heart started pounding. I was having a good, old-fashioned panic attack.

Finally, Groom pointed out, it's very possible the martini and copious amounts of wine on Monday night maybe...jusssssst maaaaybe....caused me to wake up with a hangover, which can lead to heartburn, heart palpitations, and...wait for it...extreme fatigue.

I almost want to have a heart attack to prove him wrong.

To update you on my local food/activity progress: 20 minutes on elliptical yesterday followed by dinner at Seagrass Bistro where I shared a yummy chocolate tart with my Two Salty Dogs Pet Outfitters friend. Breakfast this morning was a bagel I found in the back of the fridge followed by a tofu scramble for lunch. It's my first homemade tofu scramble. Why aren't we doing this more often?? A little olive oil (including a splash of that mushroom-infused oil), some green onion, a bit of garlic, tofu, a dash of curry, a few leftover chopped herbs from the garden, a dite of turmeric for color (which, I now know from experience, will dye your counters orange if you're not careful), some leftover broccoli, and a little shredded romano. It was delightful.

After 30 minutes on the elliptical this afternoon, I'm making spanakopita for supper tonight (with spinach Groom will buy, I hope, from a farm and not at Shaw's or whatever). I'm really craving the greens: kale, spinach, collard greens, chard.... I wonder if that means I'm having a heart attack.