My life was pretty sedentary before.  As a lawyer, most of my work time was spent sitting down.  Court appearances and client meetings move you around a little, but mostly, it’s a sit down job for most types of attorneys.  When I’d finish my workday, I’d sit on my couch and check email and FaceBook; I’d help with homework; I’d move to sitting at the dinner table; then move to a different couch to watch a movie or read or something.

Somehow, I still managed to be tired a lot. Despite my lack of physical activity, my psychological, intellectual, and emotional strain was immense. I was trying to leave a career I’d grown to hate and was under a gargantuan amount of stress in numerous areas of my life.  I started seeing a therapist and even she found the sheer volume of stress in my life to be atypically huge.

Post heart attack life, I’ve been very restricted in my level of physical activity.  Again, not that I was actually accustomed to a particularly aerobic kind of life, but my discharge orders for the first few weeks included bed rest for a while, then light activity, not lifting more than 10 pounds, limited exertion, etc. Even if I had not had doctor’s orders, I doubt I would have been up and roaring to go anyway. My surgical site, though small, hurt a fair amount for the first couple weeks until it healed.  Even now, I cannot make it up a single flight of stairs without becoming winded and needing to take a break. If I try to make it from the basement all the way to my bedroom, I need to lie down.

Stairs aside, though, pre- and post- heart attack life is, in some ways, pretty similar. So much so that I sometimes forget. When I am not looking up the nutritional values of all the ingredients in my meals, tracking the amount of Vitamin K I ingest so I can try to keep the blood thinners on course, napping, or one of my other new daily activities, I just feel like me.  Not me who had a heart attack, just me. When I remember what happened, it’s kind of terrible.