Apologies for the delay. Well, if you’re reading this at a future date it won’t make a difference. So sorry to all those who have been reading these posts as I write them. The truth is, I’m doing really well at the moment. Married life is lots of fun, I have landed a new job which starts at the end of August, and my health has improved so much that I’m training for a 100 mile charity bike ride in September.
On one hand, the events of last year seem like a distant memory, or as previously mentioned, a bad dream. I even find myself sometimes, when getting dressed or showering, looking down at my scar and saying to myself, “Oh yeah, you had open heart surgery.”
It’s easy to get distracted when life is good.
But I think if I’m really honest, perhaps the main reason I’ve paused my writing for so long, is that it’s painful. Sure, it’s therapeutic, but, therapy hurts. And the period I am about to write about was one that hurt the most.
So I am going to aim to write fewer words and post more frequently. Kind of like ripping a super sticky plaster off I guess.
Right, where were we? Ah yes, the good day. The day the storm passed. Or perhaps not!
I had one good day at home.
The next morning, I woke up, opened my eyes, then immediately closed them again. Something felt very wrong. The feeling I had in my head is really hard to explain. The best I can do is to say imagine that you are turning your head to look from left to right, however, once your head has completed that move, it takes a few seconds for the inside of your head to catch up.
Mim came into my room with a cup of tea and immediately knew that something wasn’t right. I tried to explain how I was feeling as best as I could. She sat with me for a while and then her and my parents made the decision to call 111 (the “not quite an emergency” phone number).
Turns out that the person on the other end of the phone disagreed on the level of emergency and said, after only a couple of questions, “I’m sending an ambulance and telling them it may be a stroke.”
We had been told that on rare occasions, people can suffer strokes after having open heart surgery. However, after such a quick discharge from hospital and a great first day at home, we weren’t really expecting it to happen. Which made it even more concerning when the word ‘stroke’ was suddenly being used.
I’m pretty certain that the memory of that morning is where my ongoing unease at the sound of sirens comes from. I can remember lying there with my eyes closed and my head tilted to the only angle it felt bearable at. A good few minutes before the ambulance arrived, I could here the sound of sirens, slowly getting louder and louder, until it was clear that they were right outside.
After the attempt to help me stand was unsuccessful, they made the decision that I needed hospital treatment. Due to my fairly large structure and awkwardness of the staircase (mostly my structure!) they had to call another ambulance crew to help.
The experience of getting me from the bed, into the chair, and then down the stairs is one that I’d rather just forget. Let’s just say that it involved the feeling that my brain was being violently shaken inside my skull, vomit, and Mim having to go into another room because she couldn’t bear to watch. It wasn’t nice. And that’s all I have to say about that.
When we reached the bottom of the staircase I was tranferred onto a trolley bed and wheeled out to the ambulance.
It was a cold, wet, miserable day, but on that short journey from house to ambulance, the light drizzle of rain was so refreshing.
Mim climbed into the back with me and just like that, off we went, back to Frimley Park Hospital.
With another symphony of sirens ringing in our ears.
A Journey Of The Heart 