I am at home. Week four, maybe five. I stopped counting at some point.
They call it burnout. That word always sounded abstract to me. Something you push through, recover from, then carry on. This is not that. This sits in my chest, every single day.
In 2024 I had a heart attack. They placed a stent in my right coronary artery. The left side was too diffuse to treat surgically, so that is managed with medication. On paper everything is stable. ECG looks fine. Blood pressure is fine. Troponin is not elevated.
That is the conclusion.
A name without an explanation#
Now there is a name for the chest pain. Tietze syndrome.
It sounds like an answer. It is not. It is what remains when the serious causes have been ruled out. The numbers are fine, so it must be this.
The pain does not care about that conclusion. It is still there, every day.
Still getting it done#
Last week something broke in production. The usual kind. So I fixed it.
At some point during that session the pain got bad enough that I was crying while working. I kept going. That did not even feel strange at the time. Pain does not stop the job. It never really did.
That is how I have always worked. You carry it. Finish first, deal with it later. It works.
Until it does not.
This is how it works. Things break. People push through. Eventually, it works again. From the outside, that is a success. What you do not see is how close it got to failing completely. Or what it took from the people fixing it.
What that actually means#
I used to think that was strength. Being reliable. Always available. Always delivering.
Looking back, it mostly means the system never had to fix itself. I absorbed the gaps. I smoothed the edges. As long as I kept going, nothing else had to change.
That works for a long time. Longer than it should.
When the usual fixes stop working#
I tried the obvious things. Box breathing. The techniques that normally take the edge off.
This time they did not land. Not enough to matter.
That is new.
What happens when you actually stop#
This weekend I stopped properly.
No work. No thinking about it. I went outside. Went fishing. Sat in the pool with my son. Spent time with the 3D printer.
The pain did not disappear. But it shifted. Less sharp. More in the background. Something closer to manageable.
That does not fit the story I have always told myself.
Where that leaves me#
In my head, nothing has changed. I still want to fix things, build things, move forward. That part is intact.
My body seems to have a different opinion.
Pushing through only works as long as your body agrees to be pushed.
Mine has stopped agreeing.
So the question is simple enough.
What now?
