Deaths near Giant68 experience

So, now we come down to some real changes in perspective. Not the imagined changes in the last blog, I assume you've read it? The reality was something quite different from what I thought it would be.
You read how I was having these funny turns, and that it was probably angina, good job I am not a doctor. I phoned the surgery on Monday morning and asked for an appointment to discuss chest pains with my GP. I was told to go to A&E. 'No, I haven't got them now, I've had them over the weekend. I just need to talk to a doctor about it'
'You MUST go to A&E. Now.' That was it, final. As I was at work I told my boss how the conversation had gone. I was told to go to A&E.
So off I toddled, picked up the car, picked up Mrs Giant68 and off we went to A&E. The Accident & Emergency depts at hospitals are not places where I want to spend my morning but once booked in they whisked me through quite quickly. They insisted that Mrs Giant68 stay behind in the waiting room.
Next, I am connected up to various machines and blood is taken and I wait for the results. A cardiac care nurse turns up and gives me some aspirin. I wait a little longer. Meanwhile, I have texted Mrs Giant68 and suggested that she go and find a coffee and as soon as I know what is going on I will let her know.
Several people turn up at my bedside and one says 'It appears that you have had, at least, one heart attack. Probably more, and another is imminent.'
All of a sudden shit has got real.
I was given more aspirin, along with many other pills to fend off any more heart attacks. Looks like I am not going home today. I texted Mrs Giant68 with trembling fingers.
I thought that I knew the symptoms of a heart attack. Crushing chest pain, pain down the arm, possibly pain in the neck and jaw...  But I had been told that I had suffered a heart attack. No crushing pain, no pain in the arm, bit of an ache in the jaw. Obviously, there was some mistake here. They would do more tests and they would be proved wrong and I could go home.
It wasn't to be. I stayed in overnight, with the promise of an angioplasty the next day. They would insert stents into the cardiac arteries and I would be home by the end of the week.
Bad news seemed to haunt me this week. I had the angioplasty, fascinating procedure to watch, all under local anesthetic. More bad news. The cardiac arteries are too badly blocked for stents to help. I would have to have bypass surgery.
Have you ever been scared? Properly scared, I may die type scared? I have, and it is not a feeling I want again. I was now paying for all the fun I had during my late teens and twenties. The drinking smoking and general good living. The dirty burgers and bacon sandwiches, all those things you eat and do when you are young and immortal. Then comes a point when you are no longer immortal and that thread of life becomes very thin and frayed.
Surgery is booked for a couple of days hence and I am taken back to a ward.
All this time I am being looked after, poked, prodded, drained of bodily fluids, flirting with nurses etc, but what of those nearest and dearest? I am in hospital being looked after, how does Mrs Giant68 feel when visiting time is over and she has to go home to an empty house? And there is the possibility that 'Deaths near Giant68 experience' may become the real thing? I hope I never find out, it must have been a nightmare.
Surgeon visits my bedside and confidently tells me that they are going to do a quadruple bypass, not a triple, more bad news.
Eventually I am taken away to be given the milk of amnesia and carved open. I was taken just after lunch, about 12:30. I was woken at 5:30 the next morning, having had a quintuple bypass, or cabbages x 5 as they referred to it. Took me a while to find out what cabbages referred to, CABG or Cardiac Artery Bypass Graft.
I am now recovering nicely. Every day a little better. I feel good. Death did not come for me this time but he was close, watching from the corner of the room with my lifetimer in his hand. I was very lucky that he decided to turn it over rather than let the sands of life dribble away to nothing. But it gives you a different perspective. The sun seems a little brighter now, the cuddles from my grandsprogs are worth more, those moments with Mrs Giant68 much sweeter. It may sound very cliched but it is true, it is just a shame that you have to go through something like this to make you realise it. I don't mind admitting that when I got home and I was on my own, all the visitors had gone, I cried like a baby for 5 minutes when it all came crashing down into thoughts, just what had happened and what could've happened.
I am not going to turn into someone who bangs on about good living. Once I am recovered I will enjoy a glass of wine, or a beer. It's all about moderation. The Heart Failure team I have to see regularly, have explained this to me. Anything in moderation is fine, apart from life, grab that with both hands and wring everything you can get out of it. I intend to live to a ripe old age and, together with Mrs Giant68, see and do things that we should have done years ago.
Right, that's the serious stuff done. The next blog will be about being in hospital, laxatives, aging European Drag Queens and a police raid on the Eye Hospital. And maybe a few comments on hospital food.

Regards
Giant68

Changes in perspective.

This is a piece I wrote last weekend, in the early hours of the morning not realising how my life would change over the next few days.

I haven’t written for a while. I guess that the original premise of this blog has changed. I started it as a grumpy bloke, writing about the things that, generally, peed me off. Children being taken to stately homes, bad drivers, selfish people, you know the sort of thing, all those things that annoy a lot of people but because we are British we keep to ourselves. With the dawning of the new job that changed.

All of a sudden I was a different person. No longer so grumpy but realising many things about myself. One thing is that I am a mediocre person. I know a lot of things about a lot of things. I can talk about Shakespeare or quantum physics, interested in everything but never really picking one subject to be good at. If you talk, and act, with confidence people will believe you know what you are doing.

I work in a primary school. 400 + kids who, mostly, seem to believe that I am indestructible. This enormous, giant of a man who strides around as if he owns the place. I can fix anything, and if I can’t I know someone who can. Strong as an ox and knowing more than their teachers (but only because I am older than them). For example; there was a block of flats being built opposite the school. The fencing around it was supported by sleepers, 9ft long chunks of solid timber. When they started to take it down I figured that some of those sleepers would be useful to make things for the school. I wandered over and asked the team taking them down if I could have some. ‘Sure. Help yourself.’ I picked one up and shouldered it. Now this was school kicking out time and the kids were streaming out of the school. And there was me, with this massive lump of wood on my shoulder, crossing the road back to the school. ‘Wow! you are really strong!’ I heard one shout at me. Another one who saw me in the false light. I made some comment and carried on into the school. What the kids didn’t see was me dropping it just round the corner and wondering if I needed to call the office to bring the defibrillator. All of a sudden I realised that I am no longer 24 but 54. Past middle aged, a grandfather heading to old age .I  made a joke about it and people laughed. So did I.

Now I am sitting here, at my keyboard, at 00:30 feeling my mortality again. I have had a few funny turns just lately, walking down to the shops, it’s woken me up for the last two nights. Now that is probably why I am awake at this time of the night. That tiny piece of the mind that is scared of the dark, of the monsters that could be hiding in dark corners has taken control because there IS something in that dark corner. Took me a little while to work it out, but these are the symptoms of angina. A symptom of the fact that I am getting old. I am definitely not 24 anymore. All of a sudden I feel 94.

But I am invincible and indestructible. Intellectually, I know that the doctor will do his tests and if it tells him that I have angina he will put me on tablets, maybe statins and a spray. I am immortal, with a little help from medical technology.