Two years ago today I departed on an epic road trip up to Oregon, and started at Crater Lake, which was amazing. I spent the night in Bend, and pretty much want to go back there for a full vacation someday. And then two years ago tomorrow (since it’s late it’ll be today when most of you read this) I headed into Portland and had a fabulous weekend at an old friend’s house.
There was only one downside to my epic trip. I kinda felt like crap. I had been nursing a chronic, never quite fully going away cold all winter, and over the course of my trip it kept getting worse and worse, but I kept ignoring it because I was having fun. We spent a whole day wine tasting in the Willamette Valley. We brewery-hopped our way through the Columbia River Gorge (just a month before it burned in that horrible fire). I dragged myself all over the Pearl District and other downtown Portland neighborhoods without any care over my own personal health. I just kept pushing myself harder.
I believe it was on June 1 that I drove home. I got home, unloaded my car a little too fast and took my luggage straight upstairs and it was too much for my poor lungs. I had what was probably the most violent cough attack of my life as a result. Within 2 hours I started feeling sharp pain along my shoulder blade. And then it was my chest and my shoulder blade. I tried to massage it out like a cramp and it still just kept getting worse. I finally decided just to go to bed. Lying down hurt even worse. So I started panicking and crying and googled “symptoms of a heart attack” because I was in so much pain and was that scared. Finally I called my mom to take me to the ER.
And it took that trip to the ER, a trip to my regular doctor, followed by a SECOND trip to the ER, before I finally was diagnosed with a combo of pneumonia and pleurisy, and was admitted to the hospital for a few days, followed by a month off work, followed by another month of only working part time...
Two years ago, and I’m gonna be honest. I still don’t think I’ve ever gotten 100% back to where I was before. My energy never fully came back. I need more recovery time than I used to. The moral of this story is: listen to your body when it’s trying to tell you something! If you ignore it, it can only lead to badness.
