I'm Still Here

Well, it's been longer than I had hoped since my last post. My activity had to slow down just about everywhere for awhile because of a few problems. Let me explain by telling you what happened on my last short hike. This should be a lesson for anyone to watch your health closely before doing any outdoor activity.

Most of you already know that I've been struggling to get back to my old everyday self since a car accident some months ago. I was thinking exactly that when I was finally able to go hiking two days in a row. That first day felt a little tedious for some reason, but I didn't think much about it at the time. I was just happy that I had been out.

I was a little disappointed when I got home because my camera didn't cooperate that day, giving me some very bad pictures. It turned out that I had some of the settings wrong from some previous experimentation. If you think the pictures I have in this post look bleak, you should see the bad ones. So I decided that more pictures was good enough reason to go back out a second day.

I wasn't sure I wanted to go out again, but I felt okay before I left so off I went. But when I pulled my truck into the parking lot of the nature park I could sense there was something wrong. I felt tired and my heart just wasn't into the whole thing this time. That's when I wisely decided I'd make this trip a little short. I'd see how it went when I got out there.

You long time readers know that I was out at these places all winter long last year with no problem. But this time it just felt colder to me than I thought it should. I walked only about 2/3 of the way through the park and decided I should go ahead and turn back. I just couldn't shake that tired feeling.

Then about halfway out I began to feel strange. All of a sudden I couldn't catch my breath and I was beginning to get very dizzy. I decided to stop so I wouldn't fall over. So I leaned against a snow covered park bench for a few minutes. I began to feel a little better so I methodically, but quickly, made my way out of the park to the warmth of my truck. There were no further incidents that day.

I decided when I got home that I would wait at least a few more days before I went out again. I thought maybe it was from breathing in too much cold air though. But then that evening came another problem. Another dizzy spell, but this time I was in the house. Not good. This hasn't happened since right after the car accident.

That wasn't the end, or the worst. I woke up in the middle of that night feeling a pain in my chest. It felt full, like there was air trapped in there. This has happened to me in the past, long before I ever started really enjoying nature. It was just stress before, but this hurt worse than ever before. I thought this was probably the same, but it did hurt quite a bit more. I waited there in my bed for a few minutes, and the pain began to lessen. I went back to sleep.

The next day I still felt a little bit of pain. It now felt like those old days when I felt a similar pain from stress. I had another scheduled doctor's appointment in a few weeks so I decided to do something then. The pain stayed with me off and on the whole time. Even though I was lucky, I should have gone to the doctor much sooner.

Well, yesterday was finally my appointment. Upon hearing my story, the doctor ordered an immediate test on my heart to make sure things weren't worse. Luckily the test results came out fine. I have to say I was a little worried. The chest pain turned out to be stress caused by all the problems from the accident.

I let stress get to me very easily, which is why I began my love of nature. Nature soothes that stress for me. I used to have similar problems until I found places to go and be alone with nature. But I haven't been able to do much of that for awhile now. This has not been a fun time for me at all.

So that's my story. Even though I was lucky, and my health has been monitored very well recently, for the most part, this should remind everyone to be careful before doing any outdoor activity. Check with a doctor. I'm not that old, and I'm reasonably healthy other than a bump on the head, but I still have problems sometimes.

And now that I got that out of my system, I hope I can move onto more cheerful things for my next post. See you then.

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