It arrived like a bolt from the blue. I will never forget Friday, December 13, 2019. I had a myocardial infarcation ... to you and me, a heart attack.
It had been a busy day performing lots of tasks in the garden, pushing, pulling, lifting all manner of bits and pieces.
At around 3.30pm I felt very unwell. It was hard to describe how unwell. Just a general lethargy and a real numbing ache in my left shoulder and arm.
A quick shower didn’t really help and I simply couldn’t muster enough energy to eat anything. Unlike me I decided, about 7pm, to relax on the bed. Basically I never made it, stuck with two stairs remaining to climb, sweating profusely and, so I’m told, looking very grey.
When my wife wisely asked if I was having a heart attack, I remember saying: “Yes, I think I am!”
She called 999 and we waited for almost 90 minutes. They were, as always, very busy. The two paramedics checked my blood pressure and fixed up an electrocardiogram (ECG). This measures the electrical activity of your heart to show whether or not it is working normally.
The results were emailed to the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital’s cardiology unit. I needed to be taken there and so, aged 65, underwent my first ever trip as a patient in an ambulance.
On arrival it was busy and I was warned I would probably spend the next few hours in the back of that ambulance in the car park. The crew’s shift ended, different paramedics took over.
This story is from the May 2020 edition of Let's Talk.
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This story is from the May 2020 edition of Let's Talk.
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