Not now....

-By Jaime Willis

"Live this day as if it were your last.  The past is over and gone and the future is not guaranteed."

-Wayne Dyer

This is the third of three daily posts in honor of Triathlon Training Blitz Week. 

One day in June 2007, I laid down to go to bed and was immediately struck by this weird feeling in my chest.  It felt like I'd just run up a flight of stairs - my heart was beating a little too fast and I was taking in an extra breath or two of air, but never feeling like I quite caught my breath.  Being the smart person I was, I doped myself up on allergy meds and tylenol and tried to sleep.  

The next day, my symptoms hadn't abated.  Now in full Dr. Google mode, I hooked up my exercise heart rate monitor and noticed my heart was beating at 90-110 BPM, even when I was sitting or laying down.  Figuring that a trip to my primary care physician at 3:00pm on a Friday afternoon in the summer was a waste of time, I decided to forego the middle man and get to the ER.  

Although my symptoms allowed me expedited triage service in the ER - nothing was really that wrong with me. My heart rate was elevated, but not 'enough' (80-100 BPM), my oxygen saturation was in the 90's - low but 'ok' and my EKG came back normal.  A chest x-ray revealed I had a bit of pneumonia - something that may have explained my difficulty breathing.  

Because I went to a teaching hospital, I got the benefit of some first year resident's full differential on my symptoms.  Maybe it was just pneumonia, maybe I was having a mild panic attack, or maybe it was something else entirely.  To be sure, they ordered a CAT scan. 

One moment, my best friend Jacky and I are joking around in my curtained 'room,' lamenting the fact that there is no patient food service in the ER, and the next, my bedside is abuzz with activity.  Before a doctor can even come in to explain what the CAT scan has shown, nurses are jamming my IV full of drugs.  

Had I left the Emergency Room that night with 'pneumonia,' I would have been dead before morning.  The CAT scan showed that six of the seven large arteries in my lungs were filled with blod clots, known as Pulmonary Emboli or PEs for short.  I was literally supplying my entire body with oxygen from just one small lobe of one lung.  That 'pneumonia' the doctors saw on the chest x-ray was actually my lungs beginning to suffer necrosis from lack of oxygen.  Those mild symptoms I had were the only warning that my lungs would be in seriously poor condition in a matter of hours.  

With medications and a week-long hospital stay, the doctors were able to get my PEs under control and me back on track to full health.  As it turns out, I have a genetic blood protein deficiency that causes my blood to be thicker than normal. Because of this, I have the privilege of being one of very few non-AARP card carrying members of the "On Blood Thinners For Life" club.

I say privilege because I really feel like it is. The reason that there aren't more "young" folks like me out there on blood thinners is because most people my age who get PEs don't live to be diagnosed, much less treated.  I got seriously lucky. 

Denise, Cecilia, Katie, Sarah, and I after our second
time through the zip line course in Costa Rica.

I wish the same outcome were true for my friend Sarah Tilman.  In early 2009, Just a few months after we returned from an amazing trip zip-lining through the rain forests of  Costa Rica, Sarah also fell ill.  She went to work that morning, left early, saw a doctor that afternoon, was sent home, and died that evening.  Sarah was 27 when she passed away from complications of the flu. The flu. 

No one is guaranteed anything in life but the present.  I implore you - do not use the "now is not the right time" excuse to delay reaching for your dream.  Anytime is the right time to be happy and fulfilled.  

Right NOW is the only time, and therefore the best time you have to take the first step.  What can you do  now to make your dream one step closer to reality today?