Two years ago today I felt a little off. I did some gardening, kissed my kids as they went to a sleepover at a friends house and had a nice dinner with my wife. I started feeling a little chest pain – right side, like heart burn or a stomach ailment – but otherwise okay. Linda went to bed, I went to play video games, for the life of me I can’t remember what game it was. After an hour or so I woke Linda up, the pain was worse, but it still felt stomach related so she authorized me a second pill (Prilosec) and went back to sleep. I took a shower to help defer the discomfort and went back downstairs where – unbelievably to me now – I had a cigarette.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After about another hour I was back upstairs, the pain a little worse and laid down next to Linda. Without knowing it, I began to writhe. She woke up and we agreed to go to the Emergency Room to see what was wrong with my stomach (I have a history of bowel and stomach problems). We went to the closer ER – the one that isn’t a Heart Hospital. Once there they whisked me right to a machine, hooked me up and I got to watch a doctor, a nurse and my wife-nurses’ faces all fall at the same time. Like a cartoon, jaws dropping and going clunk – clunk – clunk to the floor. Its always bad when the hospital staff then begins gesturing over everyone else that works there and their jaws go clunk too. Linda got teary and the doctor said, very earnestly, blah-blah-blah. The next thing I knew I felt GREAT! Morphene is GREAT! And I got to take a really fun ride in the back of an ambulance, which was GREAT! They even played the siren! Only problem was, they looked kinda worried. Soon I was being wheeled really fast down twisty turny halls and into a bright room where “Funky Town” was playing loudly on the speakers. A nice doctor leaned close and said blah-blah-blah and then darkness.<\/p>\n
I woke up with a bad headache and feeling nauseous. This might not have been the first time I woke up but I remember being told at this time that I’d had a really bad heart attack, I was scheduled for open-heart surgery, but for now I was stable because part of my leg wiring was in my heart and helping it work. My parents came to visit and then my kids walked in AT THE WORST TIME POSSIBLE! I had another heart attack, right then. I was wheel away and I’ve been told my surgeon was wonderful with my kids.<\/p>\n
The next time I woke up I was in absolute hell. My chest had been sawed open and what they found in there, they fixed. It took a long time to recover and I was blessed with help and good wishes from most of the video game community. From Penny-Arcade, to Joystiq, Destructoid, the ESRB, Disney.com, and fans like you.<\/p>\n
Hug your children and remember that heart problems might not manifest the way they do on warning videos. Your symptoms might be very different than expected.\u00a0 You might not even be fat, or lazy, or any of those things. You too young to say goodbye to such a perfect wife and two little children (7, 5 at them time) and too you yourself to leave this Earth while listening to “Funky Town.”<\/p>\n
My wife and kids call this bizarre anniversary “Life Day.”\u00a0 We try and keep it a happy day. Because it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two years ago today I felt a little off. I did some gardening, kissed my kids as they went to a sleepover at a friends house and had a nice dinner with my wife. I started feeling a little chest pain – right side, like heart burn or a stomach ailment – but otherwise okay. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3077\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}