My husband and a friend of his also competed in the Muddy Buddy. Last year their time was better than ours, this year we beat them. We won’t rub it in for too long although it feels really good to come out on top!
Our celebrating didn’t last long, after the race my husband wasn’t feeling well, his heart rate remained elevated all the way home. Rather than wait around to see if it was going to go down, we went to the ER. After completing a serious of tests and hooking him up to an IV, the doctor concluded that he had gotten dehydrated and had his discharge papers ready to go but, we had to wait for two more blood tests to get back. Jeff had felt much better after getting fluids back into him and we were all ready to get out of there when the doctor came back with the last two tests results. His thyroid was fine but the “heart attack test” came back showing elevated levels of troponin. Troponin is the enzyme your heart gives off when it’s been injured in some way.
Rather than getting discharged from the ER, he was admitted to the hospital to further investigate what was going on and to see if his heart had been damaged in any way, not the news we wanted to hear. Throughout the night and the next morning, it was more testing. His troponin levels had gone down which was what the doctors had expected. Everything was looking good but they also wanted to do a stress test on him. Couldn’t be done until the next day so, it was another night for him in the hospital. The stress test was finally done and, in the end, all the tests looked good, his cholesterol is a bit out of whack but he was sent home with some follow-ups appointments.
It was a few stressful days, but now he seems to be ok. Dehydration can be very dangerous and harmful to your heart and I think Jeff, and all of us, learned a lesson about proper hydration before you exert some major stress on your body. We’re certainly not as young as we used to be!
