The Near Demise of The Fat Boy

About 6 years ago, while living in Spokane, Washington, I awoke one night at 3am with a really terrible feeling in the center of my torso. I couldn’t identify it as merely common indigestion, or heartburn, which I was afflicted with often in my “omnivore” years (from age 0 through 64), but I thought it had something to do with my stomach because I felt a bit dizzy, slightly nauseous, and was perspiring profusely.

I clambered out of bed, went downstairs, downed a couple of antacid tablets, and stationed myself at the computer, the prescribed behavior I had adopted for my many previous mid-night indigestion episodes. But, after about 15 minutes, I began to feel a bit worse.  The uncomfortable sensation in my gut was not abating and I began to also experience a feeling of great foreboding. Plus, I was feeling a bit faint (I had never experienced that before!) and my skin felt cold qnd clammy.

Well, these are some of the classic symptoms of shock, I thought. Heart attack? 

I decided to rouse my wife, Anita, who, of course was quite concerned. We headed for the nearest emergency room, a twenty-minute drive.  As we drove to the hospital, my feelings of foreboding increased and I thought, maybe this is how it all will end - the Big One!

When we arrived at Sacred Heart Hospital around 4am, we were helped right away, since it was the middle of the night. The male nurse who welcomed us seemed concerned but appeared to be moving in slow motion, although I knew he was not, in taking the required insurance information and signing me into the emergency room.  Since I was an overweight, white, blue-eyed male of 60 with a family history of heart disease, he assumed I was having a heart attack since I was well within the medical establishment’s definition of one fitting into the “at risk” category for arteriosclerosis, or fat-clogged arteries that supply the heart with oxygen that we commoners call heart disease.

The remainder of the night is somewhat of a blur in my memory except that every time they tried to sit me up in the bed, I felt like I might pass out again (which I never did). Of course, the nurses hooked me up to a heart monitor, ran an IV of saline into my arm, and the emergency room doctor ordered a battery of tests since, as he told Anita, “we’re going to give him the once-over since we have him here”. The Doc quickly ruled out a heart attack, but thought it might be a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in the lung and another potentially fatal condition. So, they checked out my heart and lungs, which took a few hours of x-rays, sonograms, and other high-tech tests. By the time the sun was coming up, I was beginning to feel a lot better. But, just as a precaution, I was checked into the hospital so that I could take a treadmill stress test.

Our health insurance provider had an office right there in the hospital (presumably to protect their interests in the treatment of their “clients”), and their resident doctor paid me a visit in my hospital room at about 8am that morning.

“Say, uh, do you eat a lot of salt, Bill?” she asked politely.

“Why no, I don’t think so,” I answered without thinking very much about it.

“Well, the good news is that you do not have arteriosclerosis, or any heart disease, so don’t let anyone tell you that you do because your arteries are clear,” she said with a smile.

“Oh, really,” I said. But, I  was thinking, now how could that be, given my dietary regimen of potato chips, coffee with cream, cheese sticks, mucho meat, sugar and bacon? 

“Well, that’s good to hear,” I said. I must have looked a bit confused because I was.

I asked the next logical question. “Well then, what was wrong with me last night?” I asked.

“We don’t know, but we want you to see a cardiologist since your blood pressure was pretty high when you were admitted”.  

And, that was it, except that they gave Anita a ring binder book for me designed specifically for heart attack survivors to educate them on heart disease and how to maintain a healthier lifestyle through stress reduction, diet and exercise.

Upon returning home, Anita and I went over the book very carefully and found out why, more than likely, I had awoken during the night with such dramatic symptoms.

The previous day, eating the mindless way that was my custom then, I had poisoned myself with salt.  For breakfast I had consumed probably almost a half-pound of bacon containing lots of healthy animal fat, salt and preserving nitrates and nitrites (more salt). Then, for a healthy, yummy lunch I had downed an entire can of tomato soup by myself, which tastes great but contains lots of salt for just one serving - I had eaten at least two servings.  

Then for dinner, we had dined out at our favorite local Italian restaurant where I had ordered their famous meat-lovers (Hey, that’s me!) calzone - a delicious combination of salt-rich pizza crust, three kinds of high-salt and nitrate/nitrate “enriched” sausage including pepperoni, and lots of salty mozzarella cheese! Plus, even though I had usually taken half of a serving of calzone home as leftovers, this particular night I “decided” (I don’t remember anyone else forcing me) to gobble up the whole high-calorie, fatty, salty feast that would likely be enough to feed a small village in Kenya.

In addition to probably 8 times the recommended daily salt intake, I had mistakenly diagnosed my original discomfort as indigestion and take two antacid tablets made of calcium salts - which is another form of SALT! No wonder it made me feel worse - like throwing a sandbag to a drowning man, or better yet, throwing gasoline on a fire to put it out.

On the first visit to my new cardiologist, I was loaded up with yet a second blood pressure medication (I had started with one on my above-described hospital visit), and began a nightly dose of a cholesterol lowering statin drug (even though my cholesterol blood level was within the normal range) since the doctor wanted me to begin taking it “just to be on the safe side”.  Also, since I fit the profile for being at “high risk” for heart disease (even though I didn’t have it, remember) I was advised to start taking a daily baby aspirin to “thin my blood”. He also told me, as an after thought as he was leaving the examination room to “lose 70 pounds”, which I soon found was not that easy to accomplish.

All in all, I cut down on salt drastically, cut down on bacon, sausage, etc., and began to exercise even more than I had been.  And, while these changes plus drugs did lower my blood pressure and cholesterol readings, I continued to eat meat, fish and seafood, cheese, eggs and oil, AND I continued to slowly gain weight even though I cut down on portions, and was constantly counting calories.

But then, in September of 2011, Anita and I adopted the “vegan minus oils” way of eating and all that changed.

In the following months, I will relate all the positive effects of our new diet and what it’s like to eat more like an intelligent human being and less like a fast food-addicted-omnivorous-overeating-machine that I call The Fat Boy - the “me” I was.

The Fat Boy in 2007