What I did on my holidays...Part One
I wasn't sure what I was going to say about my illness, but what the hell it isn't a secret and I'm feeling good at the moment, with a decent chance to make a full recovery. On the 27th April, less than a week after my fiftieth birthday I went to the gym at 6:30am. I hadn't been feeling great and wanted to clear my head. I had a good work-out lasting 40 minutes and got ready to go to work. A couple of minutes after I left the gym carpark, I felt as if someone had suddenly hit me in the chest with a sledgehammer. I started to double over in the car, but since the local hospital was in sight I steeled my and managed to keep going.
I made it through two sets of lights, at one stage thinkming I was going to pass out, and abandoned my car in the wee bay outside A&E. The one marked "No Parking" is huge white letters. I managed to struggle out the words "chest pains" to the receptionist and was taken through to the treatment area by a couple of nurses. One, a friendly blonde woman in her forties took charge instantly and had me wired up to an ECG in seconds. She guided the other guy, a younger man, through reading the printout, skillfully and very quickly as they picked up a couple of early signs of a heart attack.
Next I was presented to a young doctor, who flapped completely. She looked confused and scared and appeared to have very little idea what to do next. Within seconds she was gently eased out of the way by the senior nurse's elbows and a replacement summonded from another bay. The nurse then went on to tell the new doctor exactly what he had to do next through the medium of very leading questions or requests for confirmation. "Should we...?" or "did you want the ...... done now". Everything moved reallty quickly and efficiently under the control of this one nurse.
I was lucky, within ten minutes of the pain starting I had been given two doses of morphine and was on my third ECG. My wife was called and fifteen minutes later was standing beside me. ECG's were been taken at regular intervals, confirming the type of Heart Attack I was having, the signs were not distinct enough. After about twenty minutes I was asked about bleeding, they wanted to give me a drug which dissolved the blood clot which was blocking one of my arteries, but which carried with it the risk of stroke or internal bleeding.
I said yes and saw the bigest syrynge I have ever seen moving towards the tap they had fitted to my right arm. I had one injection of the drug and felt the pain subside, the reaction was instant, before the injection was over the oain had all but gone and I felt better.
I was then wheeled up to the cardiac ward where I had three more gallons of liquid (thats what it felt like) pumped into me. Two of water and one more of the 'clotbuster drug'.
Treatment had been very quick, so the amount of damage to the heart had been minimised. My cholestoral reading was 3.95 the day I arrived in hospital and I'd lost about two stone in the year previous. But my family have a history of heart disease, with my father's brothers suffering heart attacks at arround my age. In those days the clot buster drugs were not available and the treatment I receved a few days later was also not available. Only my Dad and his eldest brother, both of whom had the treatment I've had, are still alive and going strong.
It was probably the morphine and the beta blockers they gave me in hospital, but I wasn't depressed or worried while I was in the ward, rather I was more calm and relaxed than i've been for years.
I do remember hearing one term that I didn't quite understand. By the time the consultant arrived in A&E everything had been done but I did hear him say to the doctor who faffed when I first arrived that I'd had a barndoor infarction. I later discovered that this wasn't a particular type of attack, but rather his way of pointing out to this doctor that it was obvious what was happening to me and that faffing was not aceptable.