"Inner Space - my first NHS Hospital experience"

Just an ordinary Sunday night and nothing exciting on the telly, again. Not feeling too great anyway, so I’ll best be hitting bed early with a hot drink.

Then it comes, hits my chest like a wave of lead, leaves me breathless, reeling, fearful of more too come. Get the phone while I still can. Just me on my own these days,  and these past few months have taught me to be prepared, self sufficient, less fearful of the unexpected...

But this whooshing sensation inside has “fearful” written all over it, all coiled and taut, perhaps to hint at worse to come? There are times when to hesitate can save face later. This isn’t one of those. 

I make the call.

Twenty minutes later two ninja medics whirl around my room, set up some gear, reassure me with their purposeful presence before taking in my data - telemetry, they call it. Blood pressure and heart rate: not quite as explosive as I’d feared, I’m glad to hear, but deffo worth a closer look, they reckon in that bulletproof pleasantness that I’ll get to meet very up-close and again and again these next three days.

Once strapped into the ambulance heading for Perth and having a wee chat with the medic, that crushing pressure inside me has almost lifted and I feel a bit of a fraud to be honest. But once through A&E things become clearer. That punch I’d felt had indeed been a heart attack, albeit a minor one. So, good call, after all.

It’s nearly 3 AM by the time they wheel me up to the HDU - high-dependency unit. But you wouldn’t know it. The nurses are engaging, wide-awake, and happy to hear my backstory all over again, understanding of my frazzlement with all that’s washed over me these past three hours. I tell them this is my first ever overnight stint in hospital - honestly - and they smile politely, not least by way of offering me tea. Sure, they’ve seen it all, and often. But that doesn’t make any of them seem bored. I drift off at last, to the polite chimes of overhead vitals monitors, four in this room alone, hi-tech, just like you see in the movies. The one above me displays my very own name. Which, for so many reasons, has me weep, quietly.

Tests, tea and talk, the latter much needed by me after my boring Sunday that never was. All part of the reliable undercarriage to bear my hopes and fears through two uncertain days. And then, reasonably good news: the angiogram (quite the cyber-busting procedure involving long thin wires and tiny tubes to scrub and repair damaged heart arteries) had worked well, and together with a cornucopia of pills should restore my 61-year-old ticker back to near-normal for its age. My relief - their reward. And yes, it’s massive, for all of us.

I write this wee story reclining on my trusty ward bed and awaiting a taxi to take me home. It’ll feel a little different, my home, I’m guessing, now that I’ll see it with slightly wider eyes. And for that and much besides I’d like to very much thank the unflappable nurses and doctors at Perth Royal Infirmary and Dundee’s Ninewell Hospital (angiogram), as well as the indefatigable ambulance teams who ferried me through this unexpected inner-space adventure. Special thanks to Stewart, Denise, Yvonne, Kevin, Christi, and not least Ashley - you all know who you are. Vorsprung durch Technik, but with a smile!