My body

….protested last week. Yes it did physically.

I was at work…..my ears started to pick up some odd sound….familiar and very loud…..it was throbbing pretty hard. Heart palpitations – 2 of my Asian friends called it -, the kind of sensations where you can feel and hear your heart beat pounding fast, at times skipped beats. Pretty serious stuff. I called it ‘episode’.

Throughout the day…and the next 3 days, it was pretty frequent that I had such ‘episode’. Was not very pleasant nor fun. So I took the liberty of stop drinking caffeine, saying no to my 3 cups of coffee and 2 cups of tea per day was pretty shocking.  I rushed to tell others and my family about it the next thing I know….I got everyone worried. My dad decided to check my pulse and record my blood pressure right away, wise things to do, and of course after he’s ‘through’ with me about my lifestyle and the non-exercise ‘habit’ of meself. Great. Here I was worried enough about my heart and also got told off for it.

I spent my entire weekend lying in bed…taking things slow, doing some deep breathing once in a while. The first night the ‘episode’ hit, it was too much to bear….I hardly had any sleep. My heart rate went up to 114 (double the normal standard), and my blood pressure also was in trouble, ‘it got stuck’ my dad say. When you use one of those machine, there’s 2 numbers to look out for and apparently the upper and lower no must equal to 40, mine was either 50 or 30….not good.

….the week was moving slow and fast….Sunday was really bad, I felt like a vegetable the whole day and had to skip Mat. V’s yummy cold cut dinner. To add to the ‘drama’, I spent my time in front of the dvd player…watching ‘ Desperate Housewives’, how appropriate.

I went to work normally on Monday….with the aid of the med over the weekend, something my dad gave me pretty cool stuff, 3 tablets per intake, 2 was vitamin & the other must be for the heart. All my friends insisted I urgently visited the hospital and should not wait until my Tuesday morning check up.

The hospital on a Tuesday was busy…I did a electrocardigram test and blood test….to examine the entire system bio-chemically speaking. There was a bunch of nurses, newbies gathering around my bed learning how to withdraw blood from the right hand vein while I was lying half naked on the bed, of course with cloth covering the significant bits. Then they went off to observe other things. The test was ‘ok’. Everything within the limit but doc said I urgently need to work on the excising part. In fact my blood pressure is a bit low, meaning prone to sickness.

Since the weekend, my dad urged me to take up his 5 slow breathing moves every morning. Each move must be done in the odd numbers only and the key is not to do it fast but slowly and together with breathing. Now to breathe correctly is totally new now for me. After 5 days of doing the move, I have just upgraded into 7 times per move and my sweat already starting to pour. In addition, I also use the machine at home to do some slow swing step. The key to the breathing session is also to open all the window early in the morning, taking all the positive air in, inhale from the stomach and breath out solidly. It was difficult at first, but I got the hang of it now…..the funny thing was I did not feel like I needed a coffee after the session.

I guess caffeine was not particularly suitable for me, well for a hyperactive person like me who is also working in a stress-prone zone industry where juggling more than 1 thing is our expertise.

I stopped taking the med on Monday….not feeling 100% but the heart did stop protesting.

A wake up call comes just in time.