5K'ADAYMIKE

AboutMe 

It was January 20th , 2008. I was 38 years old & remember it like it was yesterday. Down at the local YMCA, lumbering around in a half court pick up game of basketball at 250 lbs. I had gotten short of breath ( which was not abnormal for me ) and decided to sit on the bleachers to rest. I felt my heart race and sweat began pouring. I told the guys I had to go, I thought I might have eaten some bad food. Of course I had eaten bad food...for most of my childhood and adult life I had eaten everything but the fork and plate in front of me & 99.9% of the time it was bad food. I made my way out of the YMCA & into the parking lot. My truck was parked at the very top of the inclined parking lot at least 100 yards away. As I walked I started to hurt in my neck area and nausia overcame me as I vomited on a grassy median. It was exaclty at this point I knew I would not make it to my truck and knew I was having some type of serious problem. I managed to pull my cell phone from my pocket and call my wife. I told her that I was having trouble breathing and very nausious. I could barely talk at this point. She kept me on her cell phone , but I could hear her calling 911 from the house phone at the same time. In just a short time I realized I was sitting on the curb and several people walking by attempted to talk to me, but I was strugglng to respond to them and keep my breathing steady. I heard the sirens in the distance and it was a welcome sound to say the least. Before I knew it, I was stretched out with an iv in my arm. The team of rescuers were working to hook me up to the EKG monitor to get a readout of my heart. I kept eye contact with the  EMT as he asked me various questions. He all of a sudden spoke the words you never want to hear. "Mr. Martin you are in fact having a heart attack as we speak". He went on to pop Nitroglycerin tablets under my tounge as we raced to the ER. Everthing from then on was like a dream as they partially sedated me, but straight in to the cath lab I went.  After a week in the hospital and 3 stents later I spoke with the doctor who came in and sat on my bed. He told me I was extremely lucky because the blockage that caused the heart attack was on the front of the heart and did no damage. He then informed me that two other blockages of 98% were cleared and stented inside the "widow maker" artery. He told me if they had not caught this, my life expectancy with the blocked proximal left anterior descending coronary artery would have been 6 months to 6 years !  Wow , what a wake up call. If that does not put things into perspective then nothing will.

I was also diagnosed with heart disease and take plavix, lisinopril, metoprolol, pravastatin , Niacin and one asprin daily.

Its been 5 years since my Heart attack & its really taken me 4 of those to convince myself I needed to change. Thats right, after the shock of having a heart attack wore off I went back to eating whatever and almost brainwashed myself that they cleaned my arteries out so It wouldnt hurt to eat whatever.

This past fall of 2012 I was really depressed and yo yoed back up to almost 245 lbs. It really wasnt until my Son started running and losing weight that I truely got inspired and realized I wanted to live longer for my Family.

So I started slowly. I would start out walking then try to run, but about 50 yards was all I could stand. Then I would resume my walking. This continued for 10 weeks until I could actually run 1 mile straight. I knew that if I gave up It would be that much harder to start over the next time. After 6 months I was seeing great gains and changes. I achieved my first 5 k run in March 2013. I started to try to push further and have actually ran 6 miles straight, but decided 3.2 miles would suit me just fine as long as I made it an every day event. No days off ! The run usually takes me around 35-40 minutes ( Im not in a hurry ) and I rest until the next day. Plenty of time for rest if you ask me.

My goal is to one day be medicine free from the ones treating me for heart disease.