Hi Everyone,

My family just recently came through a very difficult time.  My father, a 71 year old man with Congestive Heart Failure was at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, CA visiting a doctor who dabbles in alternative medicine.  Unknown to him at the time, he had accidentally overdosed on Potassium earlier that day.  If you know about Potassium or have read about it on the site, you know that this can be lethal.  In fact, in my father’s case, it stopped his heart for over 10 minutes.  We were very fortunate and blessed that when it happened in his case, he happened to be right in front of a doctor.  The doctor immediately began performing CPR with his partner and they called for an ambulance.  They were able to get a pulse and get his breathing back and rushed him to the ER for further treatment.

When I arrived, it was the scariest moment of my life as I had never seen my father like this before.  To make matters worse, because his brain had been deprived of blood and oxygen during the time he had no pulse, he had absolutely no short-term memory.  He would ask me where he was and what happened to him only to forget three minutes later and ask me again.  After he was stabilized, a Neurologist came to see him and noticed he was deficient in Thiamine.  They began giving it to him and 48 hours, his memory was back to normal.  Aside from a few broken ribs from the CPR, he is now back to normal.

This experience reminded me of something very important.  All too often when we exercise, we are so focused on our appearance that we forget that there’s a much larger issue at stake…our health.  Don’t get me wrong, I want to look good as much as the next guy, but I’m realizing more and more that quality of life is so much more important.  Many times we put off proper nutrition and exercise until tomorrow, but by doing so we risk having poor health.  So just remember that whenever you put these things off until tomorrow, you take the chance of tomorrow being in a hospital with your loved ones around you being scared out of their skin.

Sorry to be so cryptic folks, but this really was an eye opener for me.  Also on a side note, I would really like to thank all the friends and family that were so incredibly supportive during that time.  And a special thank you to Joe Tong who came to the hospital as soon as he could and stayed with my father until 11:00 at night when he had to wake up at 4:00 am the next day.  He was there to talk to doctors, and played nurse to my father when others weren’t available.  He was a true friend through this process and I consider myself blessed to call him a friend.

So that’s it for now…Be good everyone!