A story: from ER to ice bath (part 1)

Yesterday I shared a post on social media about how my wife and I went to a breathing/meditation workshop in Canada. A lot of folks were curious why on earth we would spend our Sunday afternoon meditating in ice baths.

This is part 1 of answering that question.

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been practicing law now for over a decade. As a young law student, I’m not sure I could have imagined myself ten years later. I certainly wasn’t giving any thought to how my own physical and mental health would evolve over that period of time. As a mid-twenty something nobody really talked about what we had to do as young lawyers to proactively manage our health or well-being. We were simply told to be prepared to work hard, be stressed, and avoid the often go-to vice of attorneys everywhere: substance abuse.

As a young attorney I took pride in billing more hours than the minimum (and most of the time more than any other associates in the firm). I took pride in my work ethic and my own mantra that there wasn’t an attorney out there that could out-work me. Sure, I had a bit of a chip on my shoulder—a result of some pretty deep rooted insecurities stemming from my childhood. But this approach worked well for me; at least until it didn’t. I always believed that my ability to manage a high level of stress was one of my strengths. What I didn’t realize is that it was not physically or mentally sustainable.

Looking back, the first sign that something was wrong actually started manifesting itself during law school. Through much of my time in school I suffered from regular chest pains and difficulty breathing. The stress of law school, a particularly toxic relationship, lack of exercise, lack of sleep and the fear of failure all started catching up with me. I went to the school health clinic, received some EKG and stress tests, and kept pushing on. With no real diagnosis I simply brushed it off and kept working my routine—which often included 3 to 4 energy drinks a day.

The chest pains and shortness of breath continued for years with me mostly just ignoring them or writing them off as a result of being tall (I’m not even going to try and rationalize this now). I continued my routine without making any changes—graduating, passing the bar, and practicing as an attorney.

Being a young attorney during the Great Recession brought a certain level of insecurity about your job. There were constant stories about layoffs, firms going out of business, deferrals and pay cuts. To mitigate this risk I spent almost every evening at networking events trying to build a diverse book of my own clients. The plan, I told myself, was that I wanted to make sure that I had enough clients to walk out the door and know I’d be okay. Most of these events included drinks, and most often eating out. I’d be up early and would go to bed late. “Work hard, play hard” is what my buddies and I used to jokingly say.

It should come as no surprise that none of this helped.

It was my second year practicing and I vividly recall being in my office and starting to feel chest pains and shortness of breath again. But this time it was worse. A LOT worse. I of course began to try and rationalize what was happening and couldn’t help but think it was something I ate, or something I drank. Perhaps some food poisoning? I got up and decided to go to the bathroom—rushing to a stall thinking I may be sick. As I opened the stall door, I collapsed to the floor clutching my chest and stomach. It was at this point I realized this was something else—something that I couldn’t explain away. I dragged myself into the lobby of my office gasping for air and trying to utter words that would help provide some context to the receptionist. Given my usual extroverted, happy-go-lucky self, the receptionist actually thought I was joking—that I was just pranking her. It wasn’t until she saw my face turning purple that she realized something was actually wrong.

My coworkers rushed me to the hospital where I stayed for several hours of observations. They gave me an IV, some medication and after a couple of hours I began to feel better. The ultimate diagnosis was one of two things: it was either something wrong with my pancreas or I experienced a stress attack (something at the time I was unfamiliar with). The physician advised that in order to really make a determination they would have to perform surgery and examine my pancreas. We both decided that the better route was to keep an eye on my pancreas and see if the issue happened again. The doctor also recommended reducing my caffeine intake and cutting out energy drinks.

Given that I just spent several hours in an emergency room in crippling pain, cutting out my daily red bulls seemed like the least I could do. Since that day I have not had a single energy drink. I have also kept my caffeine consumption down to generally one cup of coffee a day. This marked the first change, albeit a small one, to improve my health. Unfortunately I did nothing to address the root cause of stress and anxiety in my life.

Over the next few years, I would continue to experience health issues with no real ability for a doctor to diagnose. It started with chronic heartburn, then regular gastrointestinal distress, sleep issues, weight gain, and so on and so on. When it got bad enough I would go see a doctor—who would again tell me medically there was nothing wrong and perhaps send me to another specialist (who would ultimately do the same thing). I continued my attempts to rationalize my way through the issues: cutting out gluten, cutting out fried food, and reducing alcohol consumption for some random period of time. It had to be something I was eating or drinking. It had to be something a doctor was missing. This pattern continued for a few more years with no real progress. It was a toxic loop of stress, undiagnosed health issue, random dietary accommodation (usually the latest food fad), rinse and repeat. The result was ultimately a tear in my large intestines and a colonoscopy before I was 35.

This would all eventually come to a crescendo in a penthouse suite of the W in Miami Beach. I was there for a conference for my law practice. At the time I had started teaching a class at the University at Buffalo School of Law and didn’t want to reschedule my class. Looking at my calendar I realized that I had enough time to hop my flight from Buffalo to Miami, get to the hotel, set up my laptop to teach class via Zoom (or whatever the 2016 equivalent of Zoom was), and then get to the opening reception of the conference. It was going to be tight, but it was doable I told myself.

The week before we were to leave, I received a call from a client with a major legal/PR crisis. Our investigation team was working with the public relations team day and night to help the client respond and keep the matter out of the papers until we were ready to comment. For most of the week that strategy was going well. I was feeling good about heading to Miami for the long weekend. I boarded the flight, put my phone on airplane mode, and enjoyed a couple of hours of quiet. Unfortunately, the plane ended up being delayed about 30 minutes on landing due to an issue at the Miami airport. My already tight schedule was getting even tighter.

As we landed I turned my phone back on to about 15 missed calls, dozens of text messages and enough emails to make me want to throw my phone onto the runway. In hindsight that may have been a sound idea. The first voicemail was from a large national publication looking for a quote on my client’s recent legal issues. Not a good start. The car ride to the hotel seemed like it was hours. Me texting and calling frantically to get up to speed and help manage what had become a PR crisis.

Looking down at my watch I realized that there was now no way I was going to make it up to my hotel room in time to start my class. “Well, we’re just going to have to start 15 minutes late”, I told myself. I go to check in at the hotel (obviously in a hurry at this point), only to find out the W doesn’t actually have my reservation. See, we were initially supposed to be at another hotel that was damaged by a recent hurricane so the conference organizers transferred our reservations to the W. I was late to register for the conference and apparently someone, somewhere, dropped the ball on getting my registration transferred over. “Not a problem”, the hotel attendant assured me, “we can get you something!” Plus side—this ended up being the penthouse suite. Down side—I was now about 30 minutes late for my class.

I frantically flipped open my laptop, launched Zoom, and got my class started. Moments later my phone rang followed immediately by a text message. This time it is a lobbyist we were working with that needed me to review a statement ASAP. My heart was racing, I was sweating through my suit jacket, and hadn’t eaten anything in probably 8 hours at this point. Even now, years later, I can still feel the crippling weight of this moment. I can still feel the tightness in my chest and the air barely moving into my lungs with each breath.

I’m going to save you the painful details of how this all played out, but suffice it to say it wasn’t my proudest moment. Several hours of frantic work later, and well after the sun had set, I put my laptop down and had a complete meltdown. My wife, who had accompanied me on this tire fire of a journey, had a pretty clear message for me:

“This can’t happen again. You need to get your shit together.”

As I inhaled the room-service she ordered while I was manically triaging my life, she made me promise her that after I got a good night’s sleep I would wake up and figure out how to make sure this never happened again. Admittedly this hit pretty hard. But what exactly was I going to say in defense of what my wife just witnessed? Nothing. Because there was no defense. I acquiesced and committed to making serious changes to my life.

This was the first time I realized that it wasn’t something or someone else’s failure causing my problems—it was me. It was stress, it was untreated anxiety, and years of unhealthy habits. As my executive coach would later on say to me, it was the first time I began to realize that:

“You can easily lie to yourself. It is much more difficult to lie to your body.”

This was the start of my journey towards a better me.