Have you ever seen a mature Viking looking man sitting at the bar or restaurant quietly wipe away tears as he’s watching the Pampers commercial?  Well, I’m here to tell you why and that I’m ok 🙂

Amongst us heart patients, it seems to be a common agreement and acknowledgment that we become a lot more emotional during and after our heart incidents.

Not sure if it is a change in hormones, or if it is due to the heart medication …  or simply just because we become more sensitive to the World, and get emotionally involved as we have seen the darker side of our lives?

Listen, I can sit in my awesome La-Z-Boy chair reading ‘Jack Reacher – killing flor’, and suddenly get emotional.  Not necessarily crying with streaming faucets, but certainly, a slight trembling upper lip and my thoughts start moving towards a sad moment in my life.

Those moments are not all the time about my heart moment and the struggles I went through, but it could be me missing friends, family, my late dad, or some silly moment in a movie like Titanic when Jack is a frozen popsicle.  The latter is actually not even sad, but for some reason, my brain thinks it is and I start bawling.

Other times I’ve been playing computer games and my mind drift to moments when I was in ICU, and my brain starts imagining me dying with my family around me, or perhaps that I would miss some school games because I was gone.

Lately, it happens when I watch soldier homecoming surprise videos, ads with kids in wheelchairs, babies, old pets getting sick or just the Coca Cola’s Christmas ad.  Not sure what triggers these emotions, but rather embarrassing when we sit in a local restaurant and I start getting teary-eyed as the commercials run across the TVs.

It’s like when we cut fecking onions.  At first, it is ok, then suddenly your eyes get clogged up and the faucets open up.

It gotta be something with the medication or could it be because the heart just works better, and it hs been defrosted slightly like the Grinch’s heart?

Anyway, do not despair or run away if you see a grown man crying at the bar when watching soldier homecoming videos on the news.

It’s funny afterward, but yet not funny.  Damn onions!  We are grown-ass men sulking over silly stuff.  We should not be these bundles of uncontrollable emotions.

We wear t-shirts in the snow, put tape on cuts and BBQ in shorts when raining.

When we had our first baby, I cried.  When we got married I cried.  When my dad passed away, I cried.  That’s ok and fairly accepted amongst men too.

But crying because you are running our of baby wipes!!  Seriously, we can do better.

Have you been on this rollercoaster since your heart incident?