Three days in the hospital and one three hour surgery later I was able to walk myself to the same car that brought me writhing in pain to the ER and go home. It was an amazing relief to not be incapacitated with pain and to experience walking again, even though I had very little balance, confidence, or speed when shuffling around in my apartment. Once I withdrew from the opiates that I had been taking daily for several months and actually believed that the worst of this injury might actually be over I found my purpose: I was going to put every bit of my energy into my recovery. I would resurrect and recreate myself into an even better version of my Oprah-self. It was an amazing sense of direction and I was soon walking laps around my dining room table, taking the three flights of steps to my apartment with ease and walking several blocks around my neighborhood. Yet, something was terribly wrong. I was having a lot of chest pain, still experiencing waves of anxiety, and my new walking goal was to make it the four blocks to the Dunkin' Donuts to buy a dozen doughnuts to reward myself when I got home. That little string that I had grabbed onto after my surgery to bring me towards "healing" was fraying at a rapid rate. I soon returned to work and was blazing through my physical therapy appointments. I wanted to feel well and be able to look back on this chapter of my life as just another challenge that I moved through to become a better person. Except, something was terribly wrong.
My orthopedic surgeon decided that my complaints of daily, frequent chest pain were worth a referral to a cardiologist. I soon was told that I had an enlarged heart and fluid around my heart, a condition known as pericarditis, that were causing my discomfort. The cause of these conditions could not quite be determined but four months of oral steriods and a year of pushing my body beyond its limits were likely involved. My resting heart rate was nearly 100 and I often felt short of breath. This too was blamed on my newly diagnosed cardiac conditions but no one ever intimated it could also be a result of anxiety. I wouldn't figure that out for a few more years. I wore heart monitors, had multiple stress tests, and was but on beta blockers in an effort to offer relief and an explanation. I can tell you that this was the chink in my armor that weakened by already threatened defense against depression. I was 28 years old, unable to bend over and tie my shoes, and spending my free time in the waiting room of a cardiologist's office where my cohort were mostly over the age of 75 and lugging oxygen tanks behind them. Who the hell was I and how exactly did I get where I was?
I pushed on, regaining my strength and tolerating a full day of work within weeks. My newfound heart condition had freaked me out enough that I was terrified to walk briskly let alone attempt to return to any kind of workout schedule. You know the formula: dozens of doughnuts, sedentary lifestyle, depression and anxiety = weight gain. At first the weight returned ratherly slowly. I was actually quite pleased initially as my frequent binging did not seem to translate to the quick weight gain that I was used to in my past. I gained approximately 25 lbs. in the next 12 months, nearly halfway back to my pre-Oprah weight. By that point I had stopped my cardiac medicine and my enlarged heart had decreased in size to a somewhat acceptable range. My back pain had diminished to mostly a nagging discomfort whenever I sat or laid in one position for too long, and, for the most part, my life had returned to a new normal. I continued to binge and to gain weight for the next several months as I was settling into the realization that my weight loss and Oprah year were just another epic fail in my life.
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