Pain…. I don’t like this, I have a heavy pain in my chest and my left arm does not feel right. This can’t be what I what I think it is!!!
Ok let’s look it up on the internet, I sit at my desk, call up google and type “pain, chest, left, arm” Clicking on the first result suggests that I am having a heart attack. How can that be I’m fit and not very old, so I check a different result, oh, oh that says heart attack as well.
It still hurts, quite a lot actually.
“Dad, what are you looking at?” says my daughter, peering over my shoulder. Reading the screen she asks again “why are you reading that?”. “Mum, mum come here” she calls. My wife arrives and also does not like what she sees, she tells me that I have gone a lovely shade of grey, the pain is getting worse and I have to concede that I have a problem.
A discussion ensues and I finally agree that we could call the doctors surgery and see what they think…the surgery thinks that I should get myself to the surgery quickly and a doctor will see me straight away. I realise that I probably should not drive so my wife rushes us to the doctors, as we walk in I have to sit down in the entrance hall the pain is getting worse and I feel weak, the receptionist says to go straight through to the doctors room. I really do not want to move but force myself to walk, hunched and hand on chest, through the waiting room to see the doctor. We walk into the doctor’s room and when he looks up I see the change in his expression and know that I may actually be in real trouble.
He decides to take me through to a nurse’s treatment room, I follow him but I really have had enough walking. I hear the doctor asking for an ambulance to be called for.
“Please just let me lie down” I think but what I say is “I’m alright, really” because I do not want to scare my wife, who is looking panicked. The nurse and doctor get busy, aspirin is pushed into my mouth, a nurse arrives and a huge needle is pushed into my arm, for later use at the hospital I am told.
As I feel myself slowing down but the pace is picking up around me, an emergency responder arrives, a man in a green outfit with some bags, he tells my wife that this is his first ever call out, excitement in his voice. But he does not actually do anything. Can you imagine the call he gets “emergency, suspected heart attack” says control “where?” says the green man “the doctor’s surgery” says control.
So green man swells the audience numbers and then the ambulance men arrive, they get busy loading me onto a stretcher and pushing more aspirin into my mouth, “chew on those” one of them says. People keep asking me how bad the pain is on a scale of 1 to 10 “oh, 4 or 5” I say because I do not want to worrymy wife. “4 or 5!” asks the ambulance man, looking sceptical.
I’m starting not to feel part of the proceedings but I am worried about my daughter who is at home alone so I suggest my wife should go and look after her “I will see you later” I say, having no idea what I was talking about or if there will even be a later.
I am wheeled through the waiting room towards the ambulance adding a touch of excitement to the waiting process. “You will never guess what happened at the doctors today…”
In the ambulance all was calm if you do not include a siren and roaring engine. The ambulance man was reassuring. “So” he says “how much does it really hurt on a scale of 1 to 10?” and I admit that it may be a 9.
As we whizz along I have time to think, and be scared, this may be a good point to mention my chronic fear of dying.
