healthy living

For the past eight months, I've been exercising like a fiend. After I gave up the World of Warcraft, I took up frequenting the gym, lifting weights and pushing myself to new extremes on the exercise machines. You'd think by now I'd be a sleek greyhound of a woman, and indeed I have some fairly impressive gym-toned muscles, nestled in amongst the fat, but I'm getting out of breath often. A person who does a full hour of cardio, leaving her literally dripping sweat, nearly every day of the week should be able to climb a flight of stairs without getting winded.

 I have always had a funky heart, and I haven't had a cardiological workout since the 90's. Although my cholesterol, blood pressure, triglycerides and other sundry measures of health have always been fabulous, I've always had an arrhythmia. On top of that, I had a life-threatening infection of the heart in college, myocarditis, which caused me to lose both a fabulous job and a somewhat less fabulous boyfriend, who thought I was being a hypochondriac and took off on an extended road trip, and then felt too freaked out to try to make up for it when he realized I wasn't faking after his return (sidenote: he looked me up a year or two later, interested in trying again, but by then I was with Husband 1.0, the Scotch-Drinking Husband, so I had the last laugh in theory).

 So the question arises: could it possibly take longer than eight months of strict and strenuous exercise to make up for a couple years of Warcrafting sloth? Or is my heart acting up again, and if so, should I be exercising this much without an EMT standing by? Who knows? I went for an EKG yesterday and some bloodwork, for which I had to fast and drive Lola to school in rush hour traffic WITHOUT HAVING HAD A SINGLE CUP OF COFFEE.

 I've had a lot of EKGs in my life, so many I couldn't even estimate them (I had one once a week during my myocarditis troubles), but it's been a very long time, and it wasn't the same. First of all, the technology for attaching electrodes has advanced, and it was a lot less gooey than I remembered. Next, I certainly didn't have the tech need to ask me politely, "Could you please lift your left breast?" back in the old days. Sadly both gravity and breastfeeding have wreaked some damage, and what was once one of our nation's premiere racks is decidedly less perky and awe-inspiring.

 Just going for the EKG and bloodwork made me feel better, as it felt like a concrete first step towards figuring out the state of cardiological affairs.  I finished up the day with a good half an hour of hard, sweaty exercise and not a single drop of alcohol. "You're doing your best," I reflected as I showered. "Fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, exercise... who could do more? Just put on a push-up bra and wait for the test results."