Motomynd: A caution on "beyond the rail" experiences

[In conveying this article to me, Motomynd commented, "Think of it as a public service provided from a personal perspective. I was a pall bearer at a funeral last year of a man much younger than me who died of an allergic reaction very similar to the one that almost killed me. I was very fit, he smoked. I was fortunate, he wasn't. His heart blew up, mine didn't. That's all it takes to make the difference between being here and being gone."]

Walk across
Golden Gate Bridge?

Your thoughts on “the rail” and all the things that might be linked with it brought back a rush of memories. The question I would add to your musings is, Are you taking any new medications? It is also a question I would urge anyone else with similar symptoms to ponder. While your situation could simply be reacting to the deep thinking you are doing about the dramatic change coming to your life–retirement, and the unexpected stress it may bring with it–there may be more to the story.

From age 25 to 37 I made my living by photographing, writing about, and competing in adventure sports such as mountain biking, white-water kayaking and canoeing, rock climbing, trail running, snowmobiling, and downhill and cross-country skiing. One June morning halfway through my 37^th year, I was out for a pre-dawn run with one of my Chesapeake Bay Retrievers, and as the sun rose over a hill in my suburban neighborhood I was suddenly overcome with symptoms similar to what you describe: unsteadiness, a bit of disorientation, and a sudden bizarre, unexplainable fear of the eight-foot drop to the small creek that flowed beside the road. Despite having run that exact route hundreds of times before, I had to slow to a walk to get myself together. The 200 yards along that small drop felt like I was on a tightrope.

An hour later I felt fine and since we had no web back then to research such things, I dismissed it as a one-off, as the Brits say, and got on with my life. Two days later, on a beautiful Friday morning, I was making the three-hour drive from my home to participate in a 50-mile mountain bike race in West Virginia when I crossed a favorite bridge over the James River on Interstate 81. I had canoed and kayaked that section of river many times and I always loved looking at it and rekindling those memories as I crossed high above at 70 miles per hour. This time, however, as I looked downstream I felt my pulse climb and a sense of dread and dizziness descend.

In retrospect this should have been a clue to stop and think about what was different in my life, but a mountain bike race and a national ranking were at stake, so I drove on. The race actually went well. I won my age group decisively, placed very high overall, and except for one moment of unexplained fear on a steep downhill, felt my old self. Then I drove over the same bridge on the way home and had what could only be described as a panic attack: racing pulse, sweating palms, the works.

The rest of the week passed uneventfully as I firmed up plans to head west the following Monday to do a spate of national mountain biking assignments. The only speed bumps were a wedding to photograph for friends and a bit of a cold or allergy, for which I had gone to the doctor a week earlier and was taking some sort of new medication.

Wrapping up my work week, I was driving to the office on Friday when my pulse roared to a level I had never felt. It was going so fast I couldn’t begin to count it–and I was used to doing such in calculating how hard to run or pedal and how much rest to take in between. In a wicked bit of irony, I drove right past our local hospital just before the road rose up to meet me and twisted like a scene from one of those black-and-white Godzilla movies from the 1950s or 60s. Finally having realized that something wasn’t right, I pulled into a parking lot on the right, turned off the ignition, tried one last time to count my pulse, and, for all practical purposes, died.

To make an already too-long story at least a bit shorter, let me simply say that instead of heading west to go mountain biking the next week, I went north to specialists at the University of Virginia. And for the next several months I made trips between there and other cutting-edge medical facilities instead of trips to great biking and climbing venues.

The problem? An allergic reaction to a new allergy medication.

The result? Some bleeding in the brain, a “miracle” survivor’s story to tell, some lingering occasional bouts of vertigo, and suddenly having to give up a dream career and take on the horrors of doing studio photography to pay the bills.

A footnote: Within six months the panic attacks from driving over bridges went away. After a few years they became so distant I would laugh as I recalled them. Nearly five years later I drove north on I-81, hauling a van-load of gear for a commercial photo session in Massachusetts. I crossed the spot over the James River without incident and thoroughly enjoyed driving the huge spans across the wide Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Later I crossed the mighty Hudson River near West Point, all without incident.

That night some friends and I joked about it over drinks. “Thank goodness that is behind me,” I said, “since I’m driving to Alaska and back in a few months. I can only imagine the bridges out that way.”

Three days later, with our photo assignment done and all wonderful in the world, I loaded the van and headed back to Virginia. Then, as I approached those same bridges over the Hudson River, I was suddenly gripped by a panic attack so violent I wondered if my heart was going to stop again. Slowing to barely thirty miles per hour I somehow stayed in my lane and made the crossing, but I still don’t know how. Later that day I suffered through almost identical symptoms crossing the Susquehanna.  

In the years since I have learned frankly way too much about the long-term impact of injuries to one’s brain and heart, about the affects of caffeine, alcohol, sugar, and stress, and about how once a “trigger” is planted deep in the brain, you never know when it will fire. Your “trigger” may have been set at the Golden Gate Bridge, even though it didn’t fire until years later at the hotel in Atlanta. It may never fire again, or it may the next time you get in an elevator to the third floor of a modest office building. I would suggest you give especially careful thought to your state of mind and balance before braving an escalator, no matter how small.

The moral? Don’t live in fear, because your world will shrink faster than you can begin to imagine, but don’t confront too many fears head-on without professional help because you may blow up your heart in the process. Most importantly, if you do have a sudden unexplainable symptom you have never experienced before, stop and ask yourself: “What new medication am I taking?”