We are generally told going to the gym is a great thing for your body. You can tone and build muscles, sculpt your physique into that of a Greek god, or just work on your cardio on whatever those stationary walking machine things are called.
But if you aren’t feeling up to it, you can do serious damage to your body without even knowing it. After ignoring two weeks of exhaustion, I fell ill after just 40 minutes in the gym.
What if after barely going to the gym at all in your life, you land yourself in in the hospital?
This is exactly what happened to me.
Exercise never fails to pull me out of a slump, so my friend took me to Tait McKenzie where I got him to show me how to “lift.”
I started with 15 minutes on the treadmill and then did various chest exercises (fly, press, this weird thing with cables). I tapped out after about 40 minutes of lifting; I was too tired to continue.
Afterwards, I had intense muscle pain and could barely get out of bed. It hurt to even turn the steering wheel of my car, and it took me about a minute to get out of a chair. I then began to feel very sick, and the lymph nodes in my neck swelled to the point that I could barely breathe. I decided to go to the hospital, four days after that fateful trip to the gym.
I suspected that I had infectious mononucleosis, otherwise known as “the kissing disease.” All my symptoms pointed to it, so I was ready. However, when the nurse pulled me out of the waiting room hastily to tell me I was going to be put on an IV drip, I knew something wasn’t right. There is no cure for mono. You get sent home to sleep and cry while watching cartoons for three weeks.
I was then told my CK levels were dangerously high and yes, I did have mono, but on top of that, I also had something called rhabdomyolysis – or rhabdo for short, and I had to stay on an IV drip until my levels were back to normal.
CK stands for creatine kinase, a muscle enzyme that is released into your bloodstream after a workout to repair damaged muscle tissue. The normal level in your bloodstream is between 30 and 55 units/L. When I was admitted into the hospital, the amount of creatine kinase in my blood was 20,000 units/L.
This is dangerous because creatine kinase, in high levels, can cause serious long-term damage to your kidneys and liver. I had to stay attached to an IV drip to flush out the toxins in my bloodstream. It took about a week for my levels to get back to a safe level.
If I had not gone to the hospital when I did because of my throat, I would have never gone at all, and I would have possibly suffered from long-term liver and kidney damage and maybe even kidney failure.
I’ve learned my lesson—believe me.
I will not try to go to the gym when feeling sick again. Or I’ll just never go to the gym. Ever.
Marileina Pearson
Photo Editor
