For those of you who have been reading my column for a while you know I occasionally write about stupidity. More specifically, my stupidity – a subject I am an expert in. You know what they say, “Write what you know.”
Well, yesterday I turned in another Hall of Fame performance. I’m not sure what kind of award it deserves. An All-American certificate? A Heisman? An Emmy? An Oscar? The Darwin Award is probably the front-runner. Whatever the highest honor is for doing something unbelievably dumb, I was on stage accepting the prize because I had earned it.
Despite a heat index of 105 degrees, this 72-year-old genius decided it would be a wonderful idea to play nine holes of golf…beginning at two o’clock in the afternoon. You know, the exact moment the sun is actively trying its hardest to melt asphalt.
This says two things about me.
First, my judgment is occasionally questionable – emphasis here is on the word “occasionally.”
Second, my attachment to the game of golf can be best described as a long-term, mutually destructive relationship.
By the time I got home, I looked like I had been swimming in a swamp. Every square inch of my body was soaked, including a few places polite newspaper columns shall not describe.
Then I began to feel funny. Not “ha-ha” funny. The weak, dizzy, light-headed kind of funny. Clearly my body was filing a complaint with management, specifically my brain. Unfortunately, I am both the employee and the problem.
My wife Carol suggested I check my blood pressure. For those of you who know such things, 120 over 80 is considered the gold standard. Mine was 80 over 50, which I believe is approximately the blood pressure of a department store mannequin.
Naturally, I did what every stubborn man does. I checked it again. And again. And again. Then one more time, as if repeated denial might eventually qualify as a medical treatment. It did not.
It didn’t take a degree in medicine to figure out what had happened. I was badly dehydrated and flirting with heat exhaustion – though “flirting” feels like too charming a word for what was essentially my body staging a protest.
I immediately started drinking water mixed with an electrolyte powder we had on hand. I was still thinking clearly. I was drinking. I was peeing. I was not, as far as I could tell, auditioning for a role as a sick patient in a medical drama.
But my blood pressure stubbornly refused to come back up, as if it had decided to teach me a lesson about my lifestyle choices.
And that’s how I found myself sitting in an emergency room the following morning.
I was poked, prodded, interrogated, had my blood work run and was given an EKG and an x-ray of my chest. I felt like a biology project. Finally, they gave me an IV.
My wife, observing these goings on, so eloquently said, “You are definitely paying the stupid tax.”
I nodded in agreement and replied, “This is one time I didn’t want to be a hottie.”
However, sometimes curses can be blessings. The doctor walked in, introduced himself and then dropped a bomb on me.
“You’re in a-fib,” he said.
For those of you who don’t know, a-fib is not like a little white lie. Atrial fibrillation, or a-fib, is a condition in which the heart beats with an irregular rhythm. Left untreated, it can increase the risk of serious problems like stroke.
“I’ve already called and left a message with your cardiologist and you need to get in to see him next week.”
Oddly enough, there was a silver lining to my stupidity. Had I not ignored the heat and wound up in the emergency room, there’s a good chance the a-fib would have gone undetected for who knows how long.
However, I still feel tired, I have a headache and my blood pressure apparently hasn’t forgiven me yet. Perhaps worst of all, when I asked the nurse who was going to peel off the sticky tabs on my chest, she said, “You are.” Those electrodes are held on with an adhesive made by Gorilla Glue. And just in case you are wondering, they didn’t bother to shave me first. If you want to know what removing them was like, go check out the “The 40 Year Old Virgin.” By the time I finished, I looked like I contracted mange.
So let me save you a trip to the emergency room. Drink plenty of water. Stay out of the hottest part of the day if you can. Listen when your body starts complaining. Heat exhaustion isn’t something to shrug off.
Take it from someone who just made a sizable payment – don’t pay the stupid tax.
Joe Hobby is a barbecue-loving comedian from Alabama who wrote for Jay Leno for many years. Find more of Joe’s stories on his blog: www.mylifeasahobby.blogspot.com. Follow him on Facebook at Joe Hobby Comedian-Writer.
