The night before last I was lying in bed around one a.m. trying to fall asleep. As per usual I was tossing and turning a bit. I rolled over onto my side and a sharp pain seared through the left side of my chest. I was alarmed, but I’ve had a pain in my chest before, it’s usually sudden and then it goes away. So I waited for it to subside. It didn’t.

I sat up in bed. The pain was still there. I lay back down and rolled over onto the other side. There it was again. I started to panic a little. I got up without disturbing my husband and paced a little bit. I noticed that my left arm felt ever so slightly numb at the top. It hurt to take a deep breath.

I definitely started to panic. I considered calling 911 or waking up my husband at least. I’m 35—soon to cross over to 36. I’m not a spring chicken. I don’t do my yoga as regularly as I should. I figured I could be having a heart attack. I mean my dad (who just passed away in April) had two strokes. My Grandma’s mom died from one in her fifties. I could have inherited a bum ticker. I hate going to the doctor and haven’t been in several years.

And it would be just my luck to die or become disabled since just recently my husband and I have been seriously entertaining the idea of going to Japan in August, something I’ve been more or less preparing myself for for the last three years.

I lay down on the couch and wondered what I should have done differently. Did I spend too much time studying and not enough time living? What should I have changed with my life? I fell asleep on the couch without coming to any conclusions.

The cat woke me up somewhere before dawn irked that I had changed the routine and was not in my designated resting spot, so she couldn’t comfortably be in hers. I got up and took stock. Pain still there. Still couldn’t lie on side. Arm still strangely numb. Still couldn’t take deep breaths. Fuck. But if it was a heart attack it sure was taking its sweet time in killing me.

I awoke again when my husband got up for work. Everything was still broken. I shared my dilemma with him and he tried to get me to go to the doctor. I naturally refused. Not dead yet, right? He tried to listen to my lungs (ow ow no deep breaths!). And as he was poking me and prodding me trying to find out what was wrong. I realized that something had changed in my condition. I seemed to have a very angry muscle on my left side running from my neck down to my shoulder. That seemed to explain the strange numb sensation in my arm. The pain could have been caused by a pinched nerve or something.

But what the hell had I done to piss that muscle off?

I popped a few ibuprofen and went about my day trying not to exacerbate the matter. In the afternoon I finally got around to playing Pokémon White 2. I had just beat Homika, the second gym leader and was on my way to Pokéwood. Dear god Pokéwood was text heavy. I didn’t have the focus to try and follow the conversation, so I figured I’d take pictures of everything and read it later at my leisure.

As I took picture after picture after picture with my Nikon D90. I realized that my arm was starting to hurt…and my neck was starting to hurt…The mystery of the pain had been solved. I’ve been taking a ton of pics of the game since it arrived. While I love my camera, it’s fucking heavy.

So I put down the camera, and the game yesterday and waited for my husband to come home with a much tinier camera with which to document the game. But I had to share my heart attack scare because I find it terribly amusing. Yes you can get injured while playing video games. And now, it’s time fore me to resume playing. Hopefully I won’t hurt myself this time.