At the deep-end, I suppose! I had a massive Heart Attack on Thursday gone, and when I say massive, I was fighting the fucker for an hour before I agreed with my friend Julie (who almost certainly saved my life) that an ambulance probably did need to be called!
And this is not to paint me as the macho hero, valiantly fighting death with the sword of survival and the shield of unfinished projects, but rather that I thought I was having an allergy attack of some kind, and kept telling Julie it would "...pass with a couple of decent deep breaths,, it always does"! Which requires going back further . . .
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About six or seven years ago, I can't remember if it was in Lockdown, or the year before, but certainly while Mum was still alive, I had an attack of hives, in the early hours of the morning, not something I was familiar with, but similar to a post-sun attack I'd had as a teenager, so I had a quick cold bath and rubbed some camomile lotion in and that seemed to deal with it.
After wondering if it was sweat related, as it was a humid night, I gave no more thought to it, for a year or two, until, sometime after Mum had died, I had another, when I got home from work, and again, cold shower seemed to surface. They then started to come quite frequently, sometimes a mild rash, confined to the soft inners of the lower arms, or thighs, sometimes getting to the waistband, which tended to exacerbate them into a full blown attack, which could be quite debilitating, some even coming with nausea, or trouble breathing, and other stuff, you can guess at.
Now, the typical human response is to Google hives, and start looking for patterns which make sense, and while all the hive pages make the point that the main/underlying fault is stress, I was trying to identify the foodstuff or environmental effect that was triggering the attacks, as there wasn't much I could do about the stress (three years of a lazy brother and dodgy step-mother [in my own personal opinion, of course], HMRC, court service, and venal estate-agents, lawyers, auctioneers and antiques dealers), and it was the hive attacks which were the pain in the arse!
New game - geological-demerara-layers!
Of course I'm juvenile - I blog infants' playthings!
I tried cutting a few things out, and because I knew I'd lost some of my fitness since Lockdown, I was doing practical things like switching-out white, 'ultra-processed' sugar, and I had some limited success, first with a few red-herrings (cheap sandwiches, mini-Melton Mowbray’s, certain snack-foods), then with what I decided must be McDonald's and Burger King (assuming some kind of dodgy mineral oil or E-number?)! And I had succeed in cutting-down on the number and severity of the attacks, so, food allergy - problem semi-solved!
Anyway, I noticed last autumn ('25), that I'd get a tight chest if I took a staircase too fast, but as a lifetime smoker (albeit vaping the last 12 years), who was getting the same feeling during these hive attacks, I didn't think much more of it, and it faded through the winter, and wasn't a problem, until the other week, when it returned, in the autumn, again, so the logical human, goes 'Oh well, some seasonal phenomena, we don't have to worry about!'. you know . . . pollution, hives, stress, fitness, whatever!
Now, first week of September, I was getting the tight chest, going to the car to drive to work, and it was sticking with me though the shift, fair-enough, we're climbing stairs or banks or steep paths to get the crates to peoples houses, that fat git in [redacted to keep my job] having six crates of 4lt drinks bottles to the six floor of flats with no lift - you expect it!
I'd get back to the van, have a few deep breaths (and a bit of a vape!), and be off to the next drop, fully recovered, and this 'routine' continued into last week with my shifts on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, all following the same pattern, but a few deep breaths seemed to sort it out each time!
One of the managers, Tuesday evening, asked if I was OK, as he caught me catching my breath at the Hub desk after my shift, and I said, "Yeah, fine", then Paul (who I had a row with, a few months ago, but we now get on well), had a similar conversation with me on Wednesday, as he finished his route and I was loading mine, and he made me promise to go over to the Health Centre/drop-in thing at Bracknell, which I said I would, and I'm a man of my word, only, I thought I'd cut a hedge on the way over, on Thursday, my day off!
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That little orange-pink spot, by the wrist knuckle, is where the stents went in.
The rest is bruising from the anti-clotting pressure pads.
So, there I was, up a ladder, hacking-away with the sheers when I started to feel a bit woozy, for the umpteenth time in recent years, climbed down, claiming the need for a breather, sat on the wall, until the wall started to feel less than substantial, slumped to the pavement, where various neighbours and passers-by asked it I was OK, to which I kept saying "Yeah, fine, it keeps happening, I'll be OK in a minute, thanks!", only for a fair few minutes to go by without me feeling any finer!
In the end, Julie, whose hedge it was, suggested a sit-down and bottle of water, which I accepted, and it all gets a bit hazy! I know that by the time she talked me into allowing her to call for an ambulance, I had deteriorated to the point of not talking sense; I was convinced I was trying to get a four word phrase out to her, and while I had the first two words, I couldn't remember the other two - I now realise the first two were also gibberish, anyway!
Now, this had all taken over an hour (seemed like minutes, mind), and the ambulance guys decided I was having a heart attack over the 'phone, so when they arrive about four minutes later, they just fired liquid morphine under my tongue, which sent me off to Happy-Planet, and dragged me into the ambulance, and off we went to Frimley Park!
They had already prep'ed a theatre, and the ambulance went past A&E, down a side ally to some steel blast-doors, and I was wheeled into the op'. Next thing it's 9PM? Seemed like 20 minutes, but a whole afternoon and half the evening had gone by, and while I seemed to be lucid, and remember various aspects of the surgery, equally I lost several hours!
I do remember the surgeon started before the local aesthetic had kicked-in, and I screamed and leaped off the table, only for him to shout "Shut-up and keep still, we're trying to save your life!", although to be fair, he then said in a quieter voice "More local here please" to someone, and it stopped hurting!
I also recall more than one stent, and conversations around that, and a balloon, and self-inflating O-rings, or something, but 24-hours later, everyone was assuring me only one artery was treated, so I don’t know if I imagined some stuff, or if one stent (1.8mm?) wasn't big enough, and they had to replace it with another (2.5mm?), but given that my own four-to-nine-PM seemed to have taken about an hour-and-a-quarter, who am I to trust on the narrative of events!
They have a special bin for Trumps, angry Pepperami's and Jim Davidsons,
which is nice!
Anyway, and this may surprise you, but I'm rather glad it happened, I mean I'm not glad I'll have life-long health issues now (which I will/which I have), nor am I glad I nearly died, which I sort of did, but that I experienced something most people never experience, and which some who do, don't survive. As someone who's always lived life with a 'Try everything once' philosophy, it was an amazing experience, although, ultimately, slightly underwhelming?
And that's part of the reason for writing this, when I know others have kept such things private.
We are taught that a heart attack is presaged with numbness or tingling in one arm/hand, or droopiness in one side of the face, and 'chest pain' is mentioned, but - as far as I can recall - nowhere does it say hives or breathing? Equally all the pages on hives, UK or US, official or amateur/charity based, talk of stress, and allergies or reactants, but not about the fact you might be having a heart attack.
However, in fact, it's about a tightness of the chest (more like a stitch in athletics,, but higher-up) and (in my case) a fatigue in BOTH upper arms, as if I'd overdone some chainsaw work, or weight-training, along with the deep breathing of oxygen starvation (why I was talking nonsense . . . more like a stroke, which is completely different), and maybe, hives, or similar anaphylactic type symptoms, which might have been occurring for years, prior to the main event?
♫♪♪♫ We are the Robots! ♪♫♪♪
Indeed, 'angry doctor' on the Friday said she thought most of my 'hive attacks' had actually been heart attacks, and it looks like I had been having heart attacks on seven of the previous ten days, and maybe more than fifteen or twenty, over the previous two years or so - I wasn't counting? But scaring, viewable on the ultra-sound scan, suggests a series of heart attacks, over some time.
So, if you have something which you can't explain, get it looked at. If you have got short of breath, get it looked at, if you are tired all the time, fatigued, not bothered, out-of-sorts for a prolonged period, have a check-up, if you've started getting hives, or what might be mistaken for allergy/immune-defence incidents, go to your doctor.
Because surviving a heart attack is pretty cool, not having one at all, is eminently more preferable, but not surviving one, is really, really shit. We're only here for 70 or 80-years of productive life, and there is nowhere to upload your memories or personality, and there probably never will be, so we owe it to ourselves to make the most of what we get.
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So, that explains what has been happening for the last few days (and years!), but, of course, it was International Talk Like a Pirate Day, on Saturday, and technically, I was a much healthier person, on the Saturday, than I had been on the Thursday, but that cut no ice with the medics, who wouldn’t even let me go home, grab my laptop and return in a taxi, with gown and sticky-pads apparel!
Because I had gone in as an emergency-case, I had no laptop, no 'phone, and no reading glasses on me, and my car (and keys) were the other side of Farnborough! So, I was going spare, I literally had to stare at a magnolia wall for three days, buzzing stir-crazy, which did nothing for my stress! I kept schtum, to begin with, as there was a chance of a Saturday release, but some heart-related enzyme decided to spike, and suddenly, I was stuck there for another day!
Which means that while we've had a ten-year run of uninterrupted ITLAPD's, a heart attack did prevent this year's being observed properly. As it happens, I only had two posts lined-up for this year, a long, 20+image post of the usual round-up/catchup variety (with all the Chris/Peter/show figures), and a short dedicated subject post.
But I was pretty sure there'd also be something from New York, and there was, but I couldn't/didn't get to it until late on Sunday. However Brian thinks he might have enhanced the post'ability of it by 2027, so hopefully a bumper year, next year . . . Ah-haaar! Gotta get your priorities right! 
All of which leaves me with a collection of drugs sufficient to open a small, and rather specialised pharmacy! As I write - Wednesday - I seem to have got the rhythm, even getting up early (more oxygen?) and taking the 2nd orange one a couple of hours (eight/nine'ish) before the fucking huge great torpedo one, at bedtime!
. . . but when they let you go, they really let you go, so I had to get a bus, to pick--up my car! I was going to get a taxi, but there were none, except a guy picking-up, who wouldn't get his office to send another car, pointing out the phone near the main entrance, but the phone wasn't working, was it, for fucks-sake!
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As to the hospital itself, I've had about seven interactions with Frimley Park, since I left the Army in '88, the first three, '89 (twice in one week, also cutting hedges!) and around 2000/2001 were good, the three more resent ones were anything but good - Mum's death and two trips to A&E, however, I can't fault my care or aftercare, over the last few days.
'Angry doctor' on Friday morning's ward-round, was a little unnecessary, announcing she didn’t know my story, in a tone of voice which also announced she had no intention of reading it up either! One suspects I was filling in for some other over-confident, middle-aged man, who may have recently departed her life? Her No.2 gave me a couple of conspirational grins later in the day, so she knew boss lady had overstepped the mark, but the two young lads who covered the weekend's rounds were very helpful . . . except they wouldn't let me pop-home!
One of them is only for a year, it's designed to bed-in the stents, another is only there to protect my stomach from a third! Statins I know about, and Ramipril has had it's moments on Radio4, although I haven't noticed the dry-mouth thing yet?
And I dare say, I'll end up sourcing the aspirin as a generic, it'll be cheaper, and save the taxpayer a few quid, And, US readers - I haven't been charged a penny for any of this, first-aid, ambulance, surgery, three days in hospital with food, snacks, and a washroom kit, along with 28-days worth of seven drugs - you're really not as 'free' as you think you are.
And a huge bag!
The real negative was the food, the food was pretty awful, and I've already confirmed with people who've been at Frimley in the recent past, that it's been awful for a while. Bland, teeny portions of beige/grey food which left me constantly hungry; very odd. And I've had plenty of institutional food over the decades, school, army, collage, Uni', works canteens etc . . . this was up-front, above and away the worst! The staff were lovely, it was the food which failed.
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Which leaves me reappraising various things, and realising I really must get a home by the end of 2027, not an easy task with Asperger's, and it's the stress of the last four or five years which seem to have got me to this position, so, I guess, a deep girding of the loins and relying on the drugs to keep me going!
I've managed to negotiate a month off at work, with two weeks statutory sick-leave, on Frimley’s orders, one day off, and two weeks holiday, which I had in hand, and hopefully, I'll be ready for the Christmas period with a new energy?
I've not to drive this week . . .
Anyway, I knew Sunday was going to be sunny and free of pirate posts, so I had intended to go over to the storage unit and do some sorting, which - having lost all other plans over the three days - I still managed 'on the way home'!! Three boxes emptied and a couple of bits brought back here to photograph!
And next week, I'll have to finish the hedge . . . Doh!
If you've had a similar experience, and there were things you wish people had told you, or things you wanted to tell others, but didn't get round to, even anonymously chuck something in the comments, as it's the right kind of advice which saves lives.
