Pumpernickel bread

http://www.thebreadshebakes.com/2014/08/baking-traditional-real-german-pumpernickel-bread/

Flat out

Monday, the weekday alarm wake me up at 2:45 AM, damn, I forgot to change it from the Friday’s server deployment day. I quickly resumed the sleep broken by many thoughts, mostly about what time it is. At 6 AM the second alarm on my trusty Timex Triathlon woke me up, but very unusually for myself I ignored it and my wife took the advantage to go to the shower first. Fifteen minutes later was my turn, I went to the bathroom, brushed my my teeth and before jumping to the shower I felt the weird hungry dizziness from my stomach. I went downstairs to get a glass of milk. “Weird” - my wife thought, “he never does that”. I was thinking the liquid full of sugar, fats and proteins will rehydrate me and give me a little boost. I’ve poured the glass of cold milk, took a sip and sat down on the couch in the dining room. Or at least I thought I did, grandma woke up to a thud of my body hitting the ground in the middle of the floor and broken glass. I had no idea, I hit the “deck”. I terrified them, my body unresponsive, twitching, my wife Natalia and grandma screaming at me, trying to wake me up, pumping my chest. I did come to once, lifted myself on the hand and collapsed again, unconscious. I came to again just to see my wife trying to use my phone to call 911, the microphone does not work on my phone I told her with some clarity of what is going on, but in fact I lost sense of time and place. I am not sure what happened and when. I remember my year-and-a-half daughter Zoe leaning on my chest right above my face and I really loved that sight, my little angel, gently slapping me on the chest and face. The emergency guys came very fast, we live around the corner from the Fire Department, by then I was very conscious and despite being ghostly white on my face I was recovering. Over next 2 days doctors performed a full set of tests on me: CAT scan of my head, X-Ray of my chest and Echo Cardio Gram. I was released the following day after passing the stress test (treadmill run uphill) while connected to EKG and Tilt test. I did not have a heart failure. It was stress.

The previous week was a nightmare, constant software issues, constant feeling  of fight-or-flight, constant email chains from the management, long 12-14 hour days, 20 people to manage.  My heart was pins-and-needles hurting. Friday was the pinnacle, deployment in the early morning, hence getting up at 2:45 AM, status calls, more issues and a very long pep-talk from the big boss on what I did wrong and how I can improve. I came back home at 6 PM. On weekend I mostly slept, then had a good dinner out on Sunday and went sleep very early preparing for the next week. I took 2 Advil PM tablets to make sure I can fall asleep at 7 PM. Next morning my blood pressure was too low, heart too stressed, my body gave up — passing out is body’s natural reaction to protect the brain from lack of oxygen. I’ve totally wrecked my system to a point that 4 days of bed resting had no effect, at the moment of this writing my heart still hurts, I am still aware I might find myself on the floor at any moment, or worse.