Turns out I'm not dead
As many of you will have seen from the last few updates, I've not been entirely 100% recently.
About ten days ago I went to the gym as I regularly do. I had a little bit of a sore throat but otherwise I felt fine. As I had been doing a lot of talking over the few days preceding I just chalked it up to the usual thing I get at conventions which just requires plenty of hydration and shutting up for a day or so to fix. The next day I felt pretty bad and by Sunday I had a full on flu. Monday was a holiday here in Germany so I rested up to see if it would go away. It didn't so I went to see a doctor on Tuesday who gave me an entirely expected prescription for penicillin and the rest of the week off.
Over the next few days my flu gradually lifted but on Friday I felt as though my chest was on fire. I couldn't breathe without pain and if I coughed (which I had to do regularly), there was a whole lot of pain. Also my left arm kept going numb and I had repeated shooting pain going up my neck from my chest which made my tonsils throb. This started at around 2am and was bad enough that it woke me up. I gritted my teeth, made it through the night and eventually got to sleep at about the time that Dawn was leaving for work. Things weren't any better by about three in the afternoon so I called Dawn to see if she could get the secretary at work to make me a short-notice appointment. On Friday afternoons however doctors' offices are mostly closed so emergency paramedics were called.
They did a quick EKG, dosed me up with morphine and then scooted me off to hospital with a suspected heart attack. It turns out that if you have symptoms like mine you are supposed to call for an ambulance after 10-15 minutes, not 10-15 hours. Who knew? At the hospital they stuck a catheter in my femoral artery, did a quick photo-reconnaissance of my heart and concluded that I wasn't actually about to go into cardiac arrest - which was a relief. I was then in intensive care for a day and a half hooked up to an EKG machine and various other monitors before being released to the chest pain unit.
The hospital here is a rather elderly building that doesn't have private rooms so I was in a ward with two other men. Mr Albuss looked a lot like Captain Birdseye and was in fact a former submariner. He was also deaf as a post and had every conversation at maximum volume. He knew a few words of English and would randomly throw them in to any conversation that I was in the room for - even if he was talking directly to someone else.
Mr Slewniwak was 98 years old and very ill indeed. He was Yugoslavian, spoke no English and not much more German. He had been a partisan in the war and apparently once shot at Hitler's motorcade. Impressive though this was, it was dwarfed by his capacity for coughing. Pretty much anything made him cough and when he did so it was always at length, at extreme volume and very, very wet sounding. The poor guy's lungs must have been shredded.
On Sunday Mr Albuss was sent home and was replaced by Mr Brankel. Mr Brankel was Polish and a very evangelical Christian. He had a little pouch full of leaflets that he tried to hand out to anyone who would stand still for long enough. He tried to give some to me so I told him I was an atheist. Apparently he took this to mean that I was a swing voter and his efforts to convert me redoubled. I tried everything to make him shut up about it and eventually it came down to having to be mean to him and pointing out that from my point of view, the Bible has the same relevance as horoscopes or Greek mythology. I also pointed out that if he made a list of all the gods that he didn't believe in, my list would be identical to his but with one more name in it. He really was very persistent.
I had an MRI on Monday and as a result I will forever associate James Blunt with hi-tech caves. They also had some research doctors in who were very interested in me because they generally don't see patients my age in the unit so I was a case study for them. My chest is absolutely covered with suction marks from all the EKGs that I had over the last few days. The marks from Friday are still clearly visible today which alarmed the technicians a bit until I explained that I mark very easily (I have bruises from every single needle they stuck in me all week as well as a pretty impressive welt where the catheter tube was inserted into my leg).
Today they let me come home on the condition that I don't move unless it's absolutely necessary. I can go to the loo and take a shower and that's about it. I can't go outside for anything, I can't wander about inside the apartment or climb the stairs more than once or twice a day. This has to continue for 6-8 weeks. The actual diagnosis is perimyocarditis with a few minor complications. Basically anything that causes my heart to work at any rate above 'practically comatose' could cause permanent damage to the heart muscle or even trigger a cardiac arrest.
Fun times.
/Iain
About ten days ago I went to the gym as I regularly do. I had a little bit of a sore throat but otherwise I felt fine. As I had been doing a lot of talking over the few days preceding I just chalked it up to the usual thing I get at conventions which just requires plenty of hydration and shutting up for a day or so to fix. The next day I felt pretty bad and by Sunday I had a full on flu. Monday was a holiday here in Germany so I rested up to see if it would go away. It didn't so I went to see a doctor on Tuesday who gave me an entirely expected prescription for penicillin and the rest of the week off.
Over the next few days my flu gradually lifted but on Friday I felt as though my chest was on fire. I couldn't breathe without pain and if I coughed (which I had to do regularly), there was a whole lot of pain. Also my left arm kept going numb and I had repeated shooting pain going up my neck from my chest which made my tonsils throb. This started at around 2am and was bad enough that it woke me up. I gritted my teeth, made it through the night and eventually got to sleep at about the time that Dawn was leaving for work. Things weren't any better by about three in the afternoon so I called Dawn to see if she could get the secretary at work to make me a short-notice appointment. On Friday afternoons however doctors' offices are mostly closed so emergency paramedics were called.
They did a quick EKG, dosed me up with morphine and then scooted me off to hospital with a suspected heart attack. It turns out that if you have symptoms like mine you are supposed to call for an ambulance after 10-15 minutes, not 10-15 hours. Who knew? At the hospital they stuck a catheter in my femoral artery, did a quick photo-reconnaissance of my heart and concluded that I wasn't actually about to go into cardiac arrest - which was a relief. I was then in intensive care for a day and a half hooked up to an EKG machine and various other monitors before being released to the chest pain unit.
The hospital here is a rather elderly building that doesn't have private rooms so I was in a ward with two other men. Mr Albuss looked a lot like Captain Birdseye and was in fact a former submariner. He was also deaf as a post and had every conversation at maximum volume. He knew a few words of English and would randomly throw them in to any conversation that I was in the room for - even if he was talking directly to someone else.
Mr Slewniwak was 98 years old and very ill indeed. He was Yugoslavian, spoke no English and not much more German. He had been a partisan in the war and apparently once shot at Hitler's motorcade. Impressive though this was, it was dwarfed by his capacity for coughing. Pretty much anything made him cough and when he did so it was always at length, at extreme volume and very, very wet sounding. The poor guy's lungs must have been shredded.
On Sunday Mr Albuss was sent home and was replaced by Mr Brankel. Mr Brankel was Polish and a very evangelical Christian. He had a little pouch full of leaflets that he tried to hand out to anyone who would stand still for long enough. He tried to give some to me so I told him I was an atheist. Apparently he took this to mean that I was a swing voter and his efforts to convert me redoubled. I tried everything to make him shut up about it and eventually it came down to having to be mean to him and pointing out that from my point of view, the Bible has the same relevance as horoscopes or Greek mythology. I also pointed out that if he made a list of all the gods that he didn't believe in, my list would be identical to his but with one more name in it. He really was very persistent.
I had an MRI on Monday and as a result I will forever associate James Blunt with hi-tech caves. They also had some research doctors in who were very interested in me because they generally don't see patients my age in the unit so I was a case study for them. My chest is absolutely covered with suction marks from all the EKGs that I had over the last few days. The marks from Friday are still clearly visible today which alarmed the technicians a bit until I explained that I mark very easily (I have bruises from every single needle they stuck in me all week as well as a pretty impressive welt where the catheter tube was inserted into my leg).
Today they let me come home on the condition that I don't move unless it's absolutely necessary. I can go to the loo and take a shower and that's about it. I can't go outside for anything, I can't wander about inside the apartment or climb the stairs more than once or twice a day. This has to continue for 6-8 weeks. The actual diagnosis is perimyocarditis with a few minor complications. Basically anything that causes my heart to work at any rate above 'practically comatose' could cause permanent damage to the heart muscle or even trigger a cardiac arrest.
Fun times.
/Iain