When Denial Became Impossible

I made it through the rest of that year without further incident. In October of the folowing year, I walked all over the small city I was living in at the time, campaigning for political office. It was a wonderful family experience, as brothers and their wives came to help knock on doors and hand out campaign pamphlets.

I lost weight with all the exercise and felt great. I still had never followed up with the doctor and as each day passed I felt less compelled to do so.

After the election, which I lost handily, we paid a visit to my wife's aunt and uncle on their farm in Ohio. We took our little angel girl with us and she got to see her first cow up close.

Everything seemed great, although with colder weather settling in for the winter I began to have shortness of breath. I was giving my little girl a piggy-back ride when I suddenly felt stinging pains in my chest.

The pains were not like the chest pain I had had two years earlier. These were stinging chest pains that felt like lightning bolts shooting throughout the whole chest rather than the sub-sternum pain concentrated in one spot that I had felt that fateful Thanksgiving. I found out later that these were angina pains. They are a sympton of poor circulation in the heart.

After we got home, things only got worse. I couldn't move quickly up the stairs of our apartment. I couldn't even pick my little girl up, let alone give her a piggy-back ride. The number of times I experienced breathlessness and angina pains increased dramatically.

There was no more room for denial. I finally made an appointment to see my family doctor.

Next time: Another traumatic holiday experience.
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