You know, back when I was younger, I used to think forty was the right age to die. Not too young, not too old, just in time, before any debilitating diseases had a chance to set in and make my existence painful. Then I got older, became an uncle to three wonderful kids, and decided, maybe I do want to see them grow up. They kind of gave meaning to life again.
I didn’t think of it much until something strange happened to me yesterday as I was standing up after sitting through an all-hands meeting in the office. I felt extremely dizzy and almost fell over. Fortunately, I could grab the bench I had risen from to break my fall. I sat there for a few minutes contemplating what had happened.
I got up again and everything was back to normal. I don’t think anybody noticed. I went about my day but I never stopped thinking about it.
Fast forward to this morning when I turned in bed to shut off my alarm, that dizziness hit me again. Fortunately, I was still lying down, so I couldn’t fall. Thoughts started racing through my mind.
Holy shit, am I going to die?
I lay there for a while longer and got up feeling fine. I took my mom’s blood pressure monitor to measure myself. I did it twice, a minute apart. It was normal. I still wasn’t convinced, so I went to the hospital and got myself checked out.
The doctor asked me some questions and ran me through some tests. He:
- Measured my blood pressure and temperature
- Flicked my fingers
- Made me identify the colors of objects without my glasses on
- Made me track his fingers with my eyes without my glasses on, without moving my head
- Made me count how many fingers he was holding up without my glasses on
- Asked me to grip his fingers while he pulled
- Made me lie down, neck tilted over the edge of the bed while he turned my head to the side
And probably more that I missed.
Basically, he was trying to see if I had any hints of a stroke. Then he asked if I was vomiting or had diarrhea (I didn’t) to see if I was recovering from another illness. He asked about allergies and if I had any flu or nasal congestion (nothing more than usual) which can mess with the balancing mechanism in your head.
After all that, he decided with certainty that what I was experiencing was orthostatic hypotension, aka postural hypotension. It’s when the blood pools in your lower vessels and doesn’t get pumped fast enough to your heart and from your heart to your brain.
This happens most frequently when moving from a sitting to a standing position. He asked me if I exercised, to which I told him yes (proudly lol), three times a week. Since I was physically healthy, he concluded it was probably due to my age.
Yes, you heard that right, I’ve been officially diagnosed as old.
To address this issue, I will have to be more careful whenever I get up. Like, wait for a bit so the blood flows to my head first because I am an elderly person.
Perhaps dying at forty isn’t as farfetched as I thought.
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