Don’t Sweat It

 Raise your hand if you’ve ever overheated… 

Okay, now drink some water you hot mess. My motto in the Army on the weekends was always “hydrate with beer”. Well, it’s time to hold myself accountable… last Sunday I was almost a heat casualty.

I should know better. I was trained to recognize the signs of heat exhaustion. That judgment call was tough to make after a few beers in the Samuel Adams Deck at Fenway Park. Last Sunday, Kass and I met a few friends in Boston for a Red Sox game. It was a 1PM game and the handicap seating in the upper deck was an awesome view of the field. On the drive there I realized that I was ill prepared for a day of drinking but ignored the fact that I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink up until that point. I started feeling my blood pressure drop on the drive to Boston which is fairly common when you’re in a wheelchair. Lack of muscle tone makes it harder for blood to circulate. I worked through that fine but I quickly realized that heat exhaustion and low blood pressure feel VERY similar.

Truthfully, I’ve never been great about drinking water. It’s more important than ever that I do so now because I go to the bathroom on a schedule and I need my kidneys and bladder to be healthy. Especially with the medications that I take for SCI complications. However, if you present me with coffee, whiskey or beer & I’m chilling then there’s a pretty solid chance that I’ll put the water on the back burner. Well, by the 5th inning I found myself playing catch-up with water, which is a dangerous place to be. 

My Spinal Cord Injury prevents my body from sweating. So when I’m hot, and I ignore it then all I’m doing is spiking my core temperature. I’ve been close to this point during 12 mile ruck marches and 10K offsets in the mountains but have always managed to stay the course and hydrate. That’s mostly because I was proactive with it. A wise Ranger (Nathan) told me as a new Ranger that “today’s water is tomorrow’s water”. Well now a as a 27 year old man I found myself “seeing the wizard”. Pitiful.

Seeing the wizard is an Army term for heat exhaustion. This is about the point where the Army medic grabs the “silver bullet” and you get treated for hyperthermia the hard way… 

I’ve read and listened to a lot of quadriplegics that have had gnarly symptoms and just avoid the sun altogether but in my 27 years of life and 4 years as a quad I’ve never experienced heat related symptoms. It felt like I just got back from some intense cardio and no matter what I did I couldn’t catch my breathe. We poured water all over me, put ice in my ball cap and got me out of the sun. These measures helped cool me but it was definitely too late. I survived the game and down played the whole situation which is obviously a poor decision but it was my failure to hydrate and listen to my body that caused this. I gotta own that. I felt like garbage for a whole 24 hours. I kinda earned that one too.

Remember homies, hydrate or die-drate!

God Bless!