…at least, I think I caught it.
Let me explain. I live an active lifestyle, with a healthy diet. I hit the gym six days a week, with no hesitation. I take my blood pressure regularly, and the results are always so low that the joke is people aren’t sure I’m even still alive.
I also don’t get sick. I get sick so rarely, that I remember the two times I was last sick—March of 2016, I came down with the flu and it was so bad, I couldn’t stand it, and September of 2013 with a weird cold.
I’m also a bit of a germaphobe. I’m no Adrian Monk or anything, but I’m sayin’. My gym offers antibacterial wipes and towels, and I use them …liberally. I don’t touch my face unless I’m applying skin care, I use a brush to wash my hands and nails—both the nail bed and under the nail—and I am weird and obsessive about keeping my reusable water bottle clean.
All that to say, this January, I came down with a cough so dry that I felt like my mouth was a desert. It was so intense that my abs hurt the next day, and every day thereafter. And, because I don’t get sick, I didn’t have any adult medication. I thought little of it, presuming that I’d simply overdone it at the gym and was dehydrated, so I drank in some extra water and took some children’s cough medication.
My nose started running randomly. I felt like someone was taking two thumbs and jamming them into my sinuses, much like what happens when spring pollen season starts up. It came as no surprise to me that I couldn’t smell (or, by extension, taste) anything. I vowed to step up my allergy routine, and moved on.
I’d wake up in the middle of the night, dry heaving and eventually rolling into a full blown cough, drenched in sweat. I could feel myself randomly sweating at inappropriate times, but attributing it to being over/under dressed, so I took my temperature.
99.8. Hmmm, that’s not okay. I took a children’s fever reducer, kept tabs on it, but moved on. And, because I was waking up at all hours of the night from the cough, it was no shock to me that I spent my day completely exhausted.
The real kicker, for me, was my blood pressure.
I am surrounded by people with some form of heart disease, and I’ve spent years writing about heart health and how we can be more mindful of our own. I don’t play when it comes to my blood pressure or my heart rate. I know how my heart is supposed to feel and behave in my chest. I know when my heart rate is normal and when it is elevated. I took my blood pressure and, for the first time in over a decade, it was considered “elevated.”
