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Here goes.
The source of it all? Genetic heart defect.
Joy. Nothing like being the ripe old age of 20 and being told that one night you could simply go to sleep and not wake up. That really helps me stay calm thinking that some night I might cuddle up to my girlfriend, fall asleep ... and then have her try in vain to shake me awake the next morning. Never mind that I'd be dead - the mental image brings me to tears. Shit, I feel like I'm about to start blubbering just thinking of that now.
And naturally, from that spawns two lovely side effects - absurdly low heart rate and BP. How low? Here's an idea.
At rest: 55 bpm, 102/56 BP.
Asleep: 37 bpm, 94/51 BP.
Let's keep the chain going. A low blood pressure causes me to go blind or black out if I stand up to fast. That's a great one to have at parties, let me tell you. Nothing like standing up, then crashing back to the couch fighting to remain conscious while a ring of eternal darkness closes in around your field of vision and your brain feels like it's floating out of your head.
Hell, while we're at it, let's toss in a little terrible circulation. It can be the middle of summer, a hundred degrees in the shade, and my hands will be cold to the touch. (No, I don't smoke, and I never have.)
To top it all off, let's close with some migraines. It's not the cluster headaches that kill me - it's the ocular ones. Those are the ones that feel like someone's jamming a red-hot barbed spear into your eye socket and twisting.
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