I often hear, when I talk to someone about wellness practices like good nutrition, supplementation, exercise or meditation oils that those things are too "expensive".
Number three on my list of Ten Things My Second Heart Attack Taught Me is If you think treating your body well, giving it the nutrition it needs, the rest it needs, the peace it needs, the time away from work it needs is expensive — you need to know that none of that is as expensive as a clot buster med and 4 minutes of CPR (and that’s if you are lucky)
My second heart attack was not they quiet retiring type that my first one was - heck I didn't even believe the doctors the first time and asked them to make sure the lab hadn't made a mistake and someone else's blood test was showing a Troponin of 35000 (it should be zero).
No, my second one was a huge boxer of a heart attack and once I arrived at the hospital there was absolutely NO question what was going on. Luckily there is a miraculous clot busting drug they give you to get rid of the blockage that is making your heart die. This medication has a 50% chance of putting you into full cardiac arrest -- and because everyone knows this, the medical team was waiting and ready for it.
I woke up 4 minutes later not realizing that I had been having CPR for all that time....but my chest would remind me of that for three months as it healed from the compressions. (and before you ask - No I didn't see a white light, a tunnel, or anyone waiting for me while I was gone).
My point is this. That medication is about $5000 a dose. The cost of the at least 10 people in the trauma bay with me is significantly more than that. The cost to me -- well because I survived it -- was another year of recovery, several months being very difficult mentally as well as physically and the realization I could never/should never return to the work that put me here in the first place.
Had I died during this time, the cost to my family would have been measured in decades.
If you think taking time and effort now to focus on your health, doing what ever you can to reduce and mitigate the chronic stress you are under, putting down your work phone and being present for your family, and feeding both your body and mind with the most nutritious things, is too costly, then you really are on a trajectory to disaster.
Start by being honest with yourself about how much time, both mental and physical, that you actually devote to what is stressing you out? Do you think about it often when you are at home? Do you go to sleep and wake up thinking about what you need to do? How many times does thinking about this issue interrupt a family meal, an evening out, a weekend of rest and recovery by sabotaging your mood and your attention?
How many times have you said "things will be better once i get this [insert excuse here] done?"
Nothing you do to improve your health and well-being is ever as expensive as giving up on feeling better.
You are worth more than all of it.
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Chris
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