All Shook Up

Tuesday was a helluva day.

At 2am, Jesse woke up crying for his feed. Elsewhere, Malaysians everywhere we feeling the aftershocks of the earthquake in Sumatra. But here in our apartment block, the most earth-shattering event was Jesse's wailing. Otherwise, it was an uneventful night. After Jesse's feed, I tried to get back to sleep. I was about to doze off when, suddenly, I felt a tightness across my chest.

"Shit!" I thought. "I'm having a heart attack!!!" And suddenly, all kinds of thoughts filled my head. I remembered KC's blog on heart attacks. I remembered Gina's mail about her boss' 34-year-old friend who died of a cardiac arrest over the weekend. I remembered I had just turned 34. And feelings of "impending doom" consumed me.

In my youth, I would have stared death in the face and laughed. But that day, I was chickenshit. I was mortified. I was mortified, not so much at the thought of meeting my maker, but at the thought that my son might have to grow up without his father. And for the first time in my life, I was afraid to die.

That's when I realised how much I had changed. Had the same thing happened 5 years ago, I would have just thumped my chest a couple of times, downed a can of cold beer and go back to bed. But that day, I prayed for my life.

The very next day, I went for an ECG. Then I saw a heart specialist. Today, I got a complete medical check-up (which is worthy of a blog-entry of its own!). Perhaps I'm over-reacting a little, but the event on that Tuesday morning made me realise that staying alive is the least I can do for Jesse and Mae. And as the world was shaken by the earthquake in Indonesia, I was a little more than rattled by my little episode. How's that for perspective?

I did not wake Mae that night. One more symptom and I might have. Instead, I prayed. "Dear Lord, please spare me," I whispered to the Big Guy in the sky. "Let me watch my son grow up," and in case Mae was listening I added, "... and my wife grow old." Dying or not, I was always quick with the good saves. *ahem*

Incidentally, it wasn't a cardiac arrest. The doctors (there's been three so far) are convinced that my heart is fine. They are, however, also unanimous in their opinion that I need to haul my lazy ass off to a gym. *sigh* Anyway, results of today's check up come out in 10 days. I'll be keeping them fingers crossed.