Some may say it was my awful diet that caused the heart attack. I was actually being careful before then to keep my weight down because I liked how I looked. Some may say it was the dozen or so cigars I chain smoked right after I realized he’d retired and what it meant. But those were just symptoms.

I’ve heard so many stories, particularly among the gay folk I have hung out with, of devoted deeply in love couples who died close to each other. One goes and not long after that the other. But nobody wants to hear the stories of the single and lonely. We decay slowly, out of sight, out of mind. 

I’m pretty sure these days that my heart (the actual one, not the philosophical one) would not be in the state it’s in now had I lived in a better world and found my other half. But that was not to be. The stress of being a gay kid in a world that threw hate at you from every direction, plus singleness on top of that, did it’s work. A few weeks ago I had an overnight hospital stay because my heart was dancing wildly in my chest. Atrial Fibrillation they call it.

Atrial fibrillation (AFib) is an irregular and often rapid heartbeat that occurs when the heart’s upper chambers (atria) beat out of sync with the lower chambers (ventricles). This can reduce the heart’s ability to pump blood effectively and increase the risk of blood clots, stroke, heart failure, and other complications.

They were going to give me a procedure to shock the upper chambers into sync with the lower ones, which they assured me would be painful. But thankfully overnight my heart went back into normal, what they call sinus rhythm, and so they called it off and sent me back home with a new pill to take that supposedly would keep the afib in check. It did not.

For four days after my hospital stay the afib was gone and I thought the new pill was working. They’d told me it only worked in 75 percent of patients, and sure enough it eventually came back. But I wondered what was going on in those four days that it Was working. Well, that was after my hospital stay where I’d had no coffee.

So I went cold turkey on coffee and the afib went away. Next I tried some decaf. I’d been resisting decaf coffee ever since I noticed that drinking it in the afternoon made my insomnia worse. But I could not see the point in decaf so I just stopped drinking it in the afternoon. Now it seemed plain to me that caffeine was aggravating my afib so I had to give it up and that pushed me into trying decaf. And being the geek I am I had to research how they took the caffeine out of coffee. Turns out there are two processes, one that uses solvents and the other just water. In fact the water process was the first to make decaffeinated coffee beans, and it was discovered accidentally when a shipment of coffee beans got waterlogged on the trip to the buyer.

I gave Peet’s water process decaf a try and found it tasted no different from regular…just you’re not getting the caffeine hit now. This was something I was going to have to adjust to. But at least decaf was enjoyable.

That mostly fixed the afib but it didn’t go away completely and I wondered if there wasn’t something else in my diet contributing to it. The only thing that stood out for me was the artificial sweetener I started using after I reconnected with my high school crush and decided I needed to lose weight. Prior to then I was mostly getting a sugar jolt in the afternoon snarfing down candy bars, and it was when I stopped doing that I switched to getting my wake up your tired self from coffee. But I was using Splenda in my coffee so it wasn’t costing my waistline anything.

I did some more digging discovered that afib was a possible side effect of constantly consuming sucralose, which is the ingredient in Splenda.

“…studies from the American Heart Association journals, have found that people who regularly consume artificially sweetened drinks may have a higher risk of atrial fibrillation (an irregular heartbeat) compared to those who consume fewer such beverages.”

According to what I read those studies are not definitive, but suggestive. My own experience recently is, yeah it does.

I drink constantly, all day long and somewhat through the night. I have a glass or a mug of something next to me all the time, at work and at home. If my co-workers ever saw me in a meeting without my coffee or ice tea mug next to me they might ask if anything is wrong. And ever since 2006 all those drinks have had sucralose in them instead of sugar because I wanted to keep my weight down, and I liked the way having a narrow waistline made me look.

I stopped caring about that March 6, 2016. And yeah…it shows now. But I have no reason to care anymore. So I gave up on Splenda and started sweetening my coffee and ice tea with sugar. The afib went away. Or at least it declined to the point I couldn’t feel it happening anymore.

Yesterday I went back down to DC to hang out with a friend who lives there and to hit Alero for some of their good mexican food and a Godfather margarita. That was also a test to see if I could have a drink every now and then without waking up the afib. That morning I tried sweetening my decaf with Splenda, also as a test. I was hoping maybe I can just go with decaf forever and still use the Splenda that I still have a lot of in stock. The afib came back almost right away and I had to lay down for a bit. By the afternoon I felt good enough to take the Metro into DC and try a margarita. I had just one and it was no trouble. Back home I stuck to my sugar sweetened decaf ice tea and had no trouble with afib all night long.

So I think the Splenda is out now too. Alas I have a lot of it to give away. Also a bunch of K-Cups with Kirkland Medium Roast coffee in them, and all the bags of coffee beans I got at Baltimore Coffee and Tea. Things like Splenda and K-Cups I tend to buy in bulk at Costco because it’s cheaper in the long run. So it goes. The sugar I still have lots of is still good because that stuff does not go bad if you store it carefully. I kept that around for guests that didn’t want Splenda.

There’s a “Buy Nothing Hampden” Facebook group I can put the unopened splenda and coffee on (I have some downsizing I need to do this year so I’ll probably be hitting that page lots anyway). I think I can still keep my weight down if I just don’t snarf down a lot of candy like I was before 2006. If I can manage the afib with just some diet and lifestyle changes I’d rather do that then go for the ablation and possibly a pacemaker too, both of which won’t necessarily fix the problem anyway so I’ve been told by folks that have had that done.

The gay, single, and old life in the American healthcare system. Broken Heart Syndrome? 71 isn’t that old these days. I wonder lots lately if any of this would be happening to me now and not maybe in my 80s or 90s had I lived in a better world.