I have time to think now, time has slowed down.
I started off being scared, I could actually be dying!!!
I fear for my family, how could I do this to them? How would my family cope? My daughter is still young and she needs a father, to chat to, to support her, to be there for her. What about my wife? What would this do to her and her life?
Then there was dying, I have feared death for a while, a fear that gave me chills, I would call it a phobia but I do not consider it to be an irrational fear. But now I am not scared I feel detached from my body and events, I feel calm peaceful. My body is heavy and unmoving but, “me” “I” feels safe and in a good place. I don’t understand but I am grateful.The ambulance guys were great during the journey, professional, reassuring and kind. Eventually they wheeled me into the hospital and finally into resuss (resuscitation).
From my trolley I look up and see a nurse who tells me her name, Crystal and says that she will be looking after me, which she precedes to do by giving me an injection directly into my stomach with a huge needle, I feel no pain though. Crystal was kind, caring, professional and busy, plugging me into machines, keeping my oxygen mask on, supplying continual reassurance, staying with me until later when I am placed in to a bed, still in resuss.
Mentally I float, part of my attention is for the people, doctors and nurses who come and go but
something else is happening to me. Although my body is laying, unmoving covered in cables and surrounded by machines I feel detached, alert, I have a strange feeling of expanding being larger than my body as if it is not big enough to hold me. My fear of death, now long gone, has been replaced by a feeling of “going back”. I am torn, I have a family that I love and need but I do not feel bad where I am. I feel good here I feel something pulling me. I feel connected, I feel joy, anticipation a knowing or remembering. Doctors come in and tell me things but I can’t take it in, my attention is inward, I’m hardly am aware of my body and all that is happening to it. I like being where ”I” am! .
Later
Good news I have a visitor, my nephew, Lee, has arrived and this pulls my attention back. It will not have been an easy journey for him and I am touched that he has made the effort. We chat and I am struck by how he has matured he was a good kid and is now a good man. Then my wife and daughter arrive, a navigational miracle for my wife, they look frightened and I hope that I do my best to look fine but I suppose I fail. I really should appreciate them more, stupid how we take for granted those that we love in the hustle and bustle of life, I vow to do better if I get through this.
I am really not well, physically, I could not sit up if I wanted to. My poor family, I think this is worse for them, they have all the worry and my wife would have to sort out the day to day stuff at home.
My time in resuss passes strangely a mix of activity and waiting, time was fluid passing slowly then rushing and then back to slow. I remember a man taking my blood, he wore a white coat with a lapel badge which was a silver vampire bat, he seemed amazingly happy in his work. A succession of doctorspassed through, some impossibly young, I guess that they were all there seeing me as I was the only patient in resuss.
I spend all day in resuss until, oh the excitement, a bed was available on the heart ward.
