I had a heart attack at 31
Travel blogger Liz Carlson found out the hard way that there truly is such a thing as Millennial burnout.
Do you ever feel like your life is spinning out of control? That you have more on your plate than you could ever possibly get through, and the bar for happiness and success just gets further and further out of reach? That’s been my state of mind for years.
Millennial burnout is a real thing and for those of us self-employed entrepreneurs and creatives, it’s a veritable plague. In my circle, it’s the same conversation over and over again.
I just need a break. I need to get offline. I need a holiday. I need less stress. I can’t keep up. Ouch, my chest. I can’t breathe. Help!
And this, dear readers, is how I ended up with a heart attack at 31 years old.
I’ve been hurtling towards this oblivion for way too long; it was only a matter of time. The past couple of years I was clocking in more than 100 flights a year (mostly international), and that is less than a lot of my travel writer colleagues. Combined with an insane workload I voluntarily took on, it’s no surprise my health began to decline.
First, it was anxiety. But that’s OK, you can take pills for that and soldier on. Then it was insomnia, but hey, you can medicate for that, too.
The zombie-like side effects were inconvenient, so I worked hard to pull myself out of a terrible sleep pattern through better habits. But what about those panic attacks? It’s all good, we’ll just up your anxiety meds.
Then came the neck, back and shoulder problems from hunching over laptops 24/7 and carrying 30kg of camera equipment on jobs.
When the over-the-counter medicine stopped working, I tried acupuncture, physio, and stretching. Then came migraines, returning back in full force for the first time in a decade.
I put it down to stress. I’d pop a couple of those miracle preventive pills and power through deadlines. I cut sugar and gluten but no, not coffee. How will I get anything done without coffee?
On Valentine’s Day, I woke up with a pounding headache which usually means a migraine. Popping a few of my meds, I made a coffee and got to work.
Sitting at my computer, I was suddenly overcome by a feeling of immense dread which quickly turned into a crushing pressure across my chest, back and shoulders, down to my elbows and even into my neck and jaw.
It was such a tremendous pain it felt like my insides were being squeezed out of a tube. Calling for help, I eventually fell to the floor sobbing and dry-retching from the pain of it all. I’m dying, I thought, but I don’t have time for this. Out loud, I told my bewildered partner, I’m fine, I’m fine, just go to work.
Luckily, he could see what I couldn’t, and that no matter how much I protested, I was clearly very much not OK. As he dragged my silent, surly self to the hospital, the only thing on my mind was how much I didn’t have time for this. I have stuff to do.
By the time I arrived, the pain was almost gone, leaving me achy and sore, still with a pounding, relentless headache. Tests eliminated the obvious culprits for the chest pain, until finally at 2am a dishevelled cardiologist came in and told me bluntly that my blood tests indicated I had had a mild heart attack. The culprit? Sumatriptan, my migraine medication.
Strapped to scary machines, the enormity of my situation finally hit me. I’m 31 and had just had a heart attack. I’m not supposed to be here.
My (very mild) heart attack was likely caused by sumatriptan, my preventive migraine medication. Triptans are a type of drug that are popular to treat migraines because they are exceptionally effective, which I can attest to.
It was a giant slap in the face by the universe that I needed to change my habits, change my lifestyle, and put a healthy balance back into my life.
My simplistic understanding is that migraines generally cause the blood vessels in the brain to swell and expand, and sumatriptan brings them back to normal size.
Unfortunately, they can also cause blood vessels elsewhere, like say, your heart, to shrink as well; this is what they reckoned happened to me.
As the vessels constricted around my heart, it stopped the blood flow, causing my heart to cramp in the same way as a heart attack. What is terrifying is that this wasn’t the first time I had this chest pain.
It was actually the third time in a few months, but the most severe. I would have absolutely written off this episode and continued taking this miracle medication if I hadn’t gone to hospital.
On my relentless path towards success with my work, I never really considered what sort of drug I was entirely dependent on, and I was oblivious to its very real and very serious side effects.
I was discharged after five days with a clean bill of health. There is no history of heart problems in my family. I should be all good. Then why did I feel so bad?
While I know this event was caused by my medication, it still feels like my fault. I know that stress and tension are major triggers for my migraines. I know I am living a very unhealthy lifestyle in so many ways.
I was exhausted. In some ways this feels like my body just gave up on me. It was a giant slap in the face by the universe that I needed to change my habits, change my lifestyle, and put a healthy balance back into my life.
My heart quite literally broke on Valentine’s Day.