I am given my very own nurse, the sister said the nurse was to look after my needs all day, just my luck to be ill. The nurse was young and excited because she had never been to London so I said I was glad to help. So strapped to a stretcher in a vintage ambulance off I go. There is a young ambulance man sitting in the back with us and because he does not know the nurse is my very own nurse he chats her up all the way to London.
Eventually we stop and I am wheeled into a large old building, “Welcome to Barts” says the ambulance man. The waiting area has three other patients waiting for the same treatment as me. I was first, as they prepared to take me to theatre I loudly pointed out the obvious mistake… I am still awake!
My very own nurse asked if I knew what was going to happen to me and I said no as I was not really listening when it was explained to me, because I did not like the sound of it. Surprised she starts to explain what Angioplasty is and this time I listen. I will be awake and they will use a local anasthetic. They are going to open my leg at the groin, make a hole in the artery, and then push a tube along the artery to my heart, a dye is squirted into the artery allowing the xray camera to see what is happening in my heart. The surgeon looks for blockages then it gets really clever, the tube is guided around my heart to the blockage and a small balloon is inflated widening the blockage and making room for a stent, a stent is a mesh tube, the stent is then fed along the tube and placed into the newly widened space preventing it closing again. The “good” news is that I will be awake throughout the whole procedure, in fact I can watch the whole thing on a magic television which could see inside my heart.
I am outraged, “magic television” did she think I was five years old!
Talking of outraged, patient three had obviously not listened to his specialist either and is now demanding that they let him go home. He was not there when I finally got back from theatre.
So off to theatre I go and they do as threatened and it is absolutely amazing, an xray camera dances around my chest showing a live picture on a screen. I have three narrowed areas in my arteries so I can see the tubes being pushed along the arteries and placed into my heart three times, as it was done, live. It is absolutely amazing, he is a very clever man that specialist no wonder he has a fan club.
Then off to the recovery ward, because they have opened an artery there is a strict recovery routine, I have to lay flat for an hour not even lifting my head, then I am slowly raised to a sitting position where I stay for a few hours but my leg must remain straight for the next day or two. I also need to drink water to flush the dye out of my kidneys.
A few hours later me and my very own nurse set off for Chelmsford in our vintage ambulance.
Here it all catches up with me, the combined physical effects of the heart attack plus the surgery hit me and I feel awful, weak and wretched. That journey was the worst of my life every bump in the road leaves me feeling battered, it hurts and I ache. The journey drags on and on, I asked why the ambulance had no suspension. The driver takes my comment personally and I feel mean for complaining. I could not wait to get back to my safe comforting ward and my new tribe.
That evening battered, bruised and exhausted I greet my visitors and pretend to be well for them.
My newly plumbed heart aches at the worry and strain in their faces, their pain feels like my fault. We chat and I feel a million miles away from their world, cut adrift and lonely.
When they leave I sleep, until I am shaken awake to take my sleeping pill. The sleeping pill was a dud so I chat to the kindest nurse in the world for hours until she relents and gives me a sleeping pill that actually works.
