The Widow Maker

Waking up dazed and disorientated, plugged into a beeping machine, wired up to a drip, fed oxygen and connected to a catheter bag, was not the sort of Christmas I'd been expecting. 

The curtain wrapping around my bed was suddenly drawn back and I was unveiled, with a smattering of applause from my fellow inmates of what I would later call 'Walrus Beach'. 

Directly opposite me, a large man sat on a suitably oversized chair next to his bed and regarded me balefully. I raised my right hand and wiggled my fingers in a pathetic greeting.

‘You look like you’ve had a rough time, mate,’ he said to me solemnly. 

I considered this statement for a moment. How to answer that? A rough time? 

‘Well, I guess I feel almost human again, even if I don’t look it.’

‘Harr, humour,’ he chuckled, his large frame wobbling for some time after his laugh had finished.

‘I’m Steve. Dangerous thing humour in a place like this. Isn’t that right, Dave?’

The aforementioned 'Dave', was in the bed on Steve’s right. A rather diminished looking middle-aged man with a worried, long suffering expression, rolled his eyes at Steve and gave me a wave. I waved back. Sort of. 

Looking around, there was a total of six of us in the ward. All heart attack patients with nothing to do but 'relax'. No televisions allowed to avoid any excitement. The only ‘entertainments machines’ were our heart monitors. Steve’s machine was the most exciting, showed wildly irregular patterns.

‘I’m an enigma', Steve pronounced gravely. 'They don’t know what’s going on with me.’ As to prove his point, he raised his arm and the pattern on the heart monitor wobbled and changed. ‘See? Look at that!'

Dave looked and then chipped in with his own observation, ‘Look, mine says my heart rate is 180 – even though I count it at half that! Bloody stupid things.’ Only later does Dave mention he has a pacemaker and he’s convinced the monitor is doubling the heart beat count. 

I like the black humour Brits always resort to in dire circumstances. “You gotta laugh, haven't you?” As the comedian and late Eric Morecambe would have said. I was on his ward afterall, the one he enjoyed after a heart attack of his own. Had I been in some private room with no one to compare war wounds with, my time in hospital would have been much harder.

That first nights sleep in the renowned Harefield Hospital (where the UK's first lung & heart transplant was accomplished in 1983) was difficult as a new boy. But I was in as good a place as anyone has any right to be. Only the year before, the hospital had become the leader for treating acute heart attack patients in the south of England. 

But it didn't take long before I officially became a fully paid-up member of the Walrus gang. The very next night, I was contributing loudly and enthusiastically to the discordant symphony of coughs, snorts and farts that competed alongside the robotic bings, bongs and screeching alarms.

Once, in a fitful dream, I appeared as despairing conductor, vainly trying to organise all the various sounds into some form of weird symphony. Just to make sure everyone enjoyed the nights concert, a despotic nurse would regularly, on the hour every hour, wake and stick a needle in an unfortunates arm. 

Although I eventually managed to filter out most of these sounds and find sleep, in truth it took me a long time to gain the confidence to close my eyes. Without the distraction of daylight and humour, my mind returned again and again to 'that' event. The fact was, I no longer trusted my heart to keep beating.

The attack itself came without warning while lifting and removing carpets. There was no dramatic clutching of the heart as seen in Hollywood movies. The exertion simply made me feel dizzy and out of breath. And my back ached. Nothing unusual I thought. So I lay down on the floor to recover and that’s when the chest pains started. My wife realised I was in trouble – even if I didn’t – and called an ambulance. I’d given up trying to manfully shrug away the discomfort, and by this time I didn’t care what happened, the pain was crushing. I was also very cold, shaking so much the paramedics thought I might be convulsing. They decided to blue-light me to the local hospital.

As the ambulance arrived at the local hospital the paramedic gave me a shot of GTN spray under my tongue to relieve the chest pain. It didn’t work. The ambulance doors opened and for me the lights went out. I was dead.

Click. 

As if someone had flicked off the light switch, I met oblivion. But not quite, not yet.

I come around and there are strangers with concern written on their faces floating above me; two men, a woman, and they’re all shouting. My clothes are being cut off. The woman has a blue nurse’s uniform and she’s telling me to try and be still. I’m squirming from the pain but I like to be a good boy, so I try. But I’m still squirming, so now they’re holding my legs. The nurse(?) is talking to me intently.

‘There’s a risk of stroke, but we need to do this procedure, do you agree? Do you agree?’

Stroke? I don’t want a stroke. I hear myself say the words aloud. She reassures me it’s a small risk. Do I agree? Damned right I agree.

Click. 

Again that light switch is flicked off. Again I die.

Now another man is floating above me, shouting my name. I’m confused, why is he shouting?

‘No need to shout, I can hear you,’ I tell him. He chuckles.

‘Sorry,’ he says. 

There seems to be lots of noise and bustle. It dawns on me that what is happening might be a little serious. But I have no time to dwell on this thought, as …

Click. Lights out. I’ve died again.

Again, new faces float above me. There’s a huge jolt and I see my chest jump into the air. I’m detached from what is happening as I hear myself groan at the shock. A voice.

‘He’s back’ More voices, more bustle.

My wife and daughters are at my side. They look worried. Now for the first time, I’m afraid. I suddenly feel like I might not get out of this. That the next time the light goes out, I might be gone for good. I take the chance to say goodbye. Then stupidly I ask my eldest about her new carpets, my youngest about the faulty car headlight bulb – has she fixed it? They get irritated but it gets my mind away. Then the pain is back in my chest again. I recognise the symptoms now. I have time to say: ‘It’s happening again,’ before …

Click. I’m dead.

Then...yet more strange faces appear above me, lifting me. I’m being manhandled onto a hospital trolley. voices tell me I’m being transferred to Harefield, a specialist heart hospital. Ceiling lights flash above me. I’m in a Hollywood film. Click. Now I’m in another ambulance, the ambulance ceiling is smooth white plastic. I study its contours minutely, trying not to think.

Click.

Minutes or seconds later, I don't know, time has become seriously warped, and I arrest yet again, die yet again, en-route. But I awake. The ambulance bumps and sways and jolts to a stop, the doors open. Another corridor, a doctor pushes a form in front of my eyes, I must sign. I feel like swearing but haven’t the strength. I scrawl my name and suddenly I’m in theatre. Everything is the colour of pale blue, walls and ceiling.

Multiple large monitor screens hang down from the ceiling, grey and silver machines robotically float around and above me. I'm on the set of the film 2001. Two actors or surgeons work by my groin, feeding a wire to my chest. I look to the x-ray monitor and watch my heart on-screen on my left, the wire tunnelling, my heart beating. I turn away and study the ceiling and listen, strangely calm. Good drugs. Click. I arrest again, another death. But I have no memory of the event. I’m back, watching the surgeons. Watching my heart pulse on screen.

I listen to the surgeons as they calmly work to save my life. 

‘There it is, an hour-glass restriction, just suck these blood clots out, and there, good, push the stent further, go on, further, is that far enough do you think?’

These words came from a young, confident surgeon but he’s teaching. I pray he’s a good teacher. The student looks rather nervous to me.

‘Got it? Happy with that? You happy? I’m happy with that. Good. Close up,’ he tells the student.

The head surgeon strides away to go behind a long glass partition where the techs are controlling the x-ray imaging devices that are floating over my body.

‘Good. Good,’ he shouts from behind the glass.

I whisper to the student, a registrar, who is diligently closing me up. ‘Hot-shot surgeon?’

He rolls his eyes and nods, his hands working. ‘Yeah, and damned good teacher.’

Then I'm out and pushed down the corridor to the ward. I’m introduced en-route to the sister in charge. She has flame coloured hair and I compliment her on it. She raises her eyebrows slightly but smiles.

‘Feeling better, are you?’

And I realise I am.

‘You’ve got colour back in your cheeks, always a good sign.’

That night, I have a passing ‘event’ that brings the crash team running. For the briefest of seconds, I felt my heart flutter, but it didn’t stop.

‘You alright?’ One of the team asks, checking the monitors that sounded the alarm.

Nothing feels very 'alright' or normal anymore.

The next day brings the consultant to my bed for a chat.

‘Well, you’ve had a lucky escape, five hours since your first attack to surgery is much longer than we’d like. You had a blockage in the left anterior descending artery, an L.A.D, which we sometimes call the 'Widow Maker' of attacks. But you’re still here, and you should be home in three or four days.’

Three or four days? And I was. No messing about.

I’m still astounded I’m still alive. I’d beaten the odds. The primary angioplasty procedure combined with the quick actions of the surgeons and their skill, saved my life.

I’ve never smoked, I’m reasonably fit, not too old or terribly over-weight and hardly drink. If I can have a heart attack, anyone can. And frankly, it’s a matter of luck where you happen to be when you have an attack for any good odds-on survival. 

The following year was the most dangerous for me I was told. Yet I’m still around fifteen years and even surviving a second attack later. I'm not dead yet, as per Monty Python. I don’t know when the lights will go out again in an instant, but then again, no one does.

From my time in that ward bed, I watched a number of new Walrus friends arrive in the ward and swim up back into the living world. I greeted them in the same way I was, as only one who has been where they've been, can. 

My neighbour in the next bed weakly showed me the box of rich chocolates his family had brought him and we shook our heads. This Christmas I've had rather too many of those, but hell, you only live once... and I'm back in the gym keeping fit and (trying) to eat healthily. 

Don’t ask me if I saw a light. I didn’t even see a tunnel. The only thing I’ve learned is that death is surprisingly easy. Out of the twelve cardiac arrests, I remember only four. An instant and nothing. You don't even know you’re gone. 

Advice? 

Don’t exert yourself, especially if you are not used to it, build up to doing anything heavier than normal, slowly and carefully and oh, stay close to a hospital! I'd forgotten I was no longer a teenager and nearly paid the price. I’m in the lucky ‘ten percentile’, as statistics prove only one in ten survive an out of hospital heart attack and fewer still survive the number I had. Be healthy, and God bless the staff of the NHS.