Sudden Death.
When those words appear independent of one another, they're intimidating enough. When you put them together, they can give you a coronary.
You've heard the sayings before. People are always hit with a fit of sudden rage or fury or anger, or they're hospitalized with a sudden illness. Rarely do you ever read about anyone who has been overcome with a sudden joy or glee. Sudden brings with it mostly negative connotations. Death speaks for itself. Even more infrequently than "sudden" being matched with the positive do you see the word "death" and have feelings that are anywhere near warm and fuzzy.
Not that I do warm and fuzzy. I have always considered myself fairly even keel with a dash of skittish nervousness thrown in just to keep me aware. But when my sister pointed me to a web site that provided information regarding the "condition" that had been thrust upon me in the summer of 2004, I was suddenly scared to death.
Condition is another one of those no-longer politically correct words that bug me. You tell people you have a condition, they step away, or cock their head in a way that suggests they'd just love to say, "Oooh, tell me, tell me ... just don't, ya know, breathe on me." Some people actually WILL say that.
I picked over the web site and learned that what I suffer from can sometimes cause blood clots that travel upwards to the brain and thereby can provide me with the stroke for which I've never acually longed. Or the clot can travel to the lung causing something called an embolism. I'm not sure what an embolism is, but something tells me if you have one it would be difficult to breathe.
I am 45 years old. And I have something called dilated cardiomyopathy. Since I am now on intimate terms with the condition, I call it DCM for short. Makes it more personal. Like we're on a first name basis. I call it DCM. DCM, because it can, limits my heart to working at only 20-25 percent. Lazy bastard.
Forget reality programming. Reality is not eating cockroaches while bungee jumping naked while millions of people cheer for you to beat your opponent who couldn't keep the roach down for the required 15 seconds. Reality is waking up one day and reading that DCM causes sudden death which, if I'm not mistaken, is something for which they've yet to actually find an effective cure.
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