Sunday, April 6, 2008

Now I Wouldn't Call Myself a Hypochondriac

But I would say that when symptoms appear, my concerns for the typical ailment diagnosis gets replaced by something a bit more complex...more serious...maybe even fatal.

Is that a chest pain I'm having? Heart attack imminent? Actually that was what in part spurred me on to beginning to exercise and watch my diet about 5 years ago. I remember laying in bed and having a funny feeling/pain in my chest and I thought "what if I have heart problems?" "Could this be the beginning of a heart attack?" I decided to just go to sleep and see what happened. Nothing happened except I fell asleep. But, that experience, combined with seeing myself in a fitting room mirror and seeing more rolls than a bakery, made me change my lifestyle. Anywhoooo....

This morning I was gonna go for a jog. This is a relatively new experience for me...I thought I'd add something to my exercise regime b/c I was getting bored with the Nordic Trak after 5 yrs and figured my body was just adjusting itself to the workout so I needed to add something more challenging. My plan is to do weight training about 3 days a week and the other 4 days change between the Nordic and jogging.

The last time I went jogging my legs were killing me for a couple of days - shin splints. Or so the simple diagnosis would say. I decided to Google "Shin Splints" to see what I can do to avoid them. Bad mistake.

Here I was thinking I only needed to avoid the shin splints but now I see that I could actually be suffering from a (can be) fatal ailment called "Compartment Syndrome".

Google can be your friend or it can be your enemy. If you are looking for peace of mind, you might be looking in the wrong place. But I still do it. And it's entertaining. In 30 seconds you can go from having an innocent looking rash to having Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your column made me laugh as I read through it ! I'm going to copy it and send it to my friends !