Virtual Realm

A little shake up to life

Wednesday, July 29 2009 - personal

A couple of people have been asking so I thought I would post about the last few weeks of my life as it may explain a couple of things to some, but on the other hand it will allow me to get it out in the open.

It all started a few weeks back where I went to work as normal but about a hour after starting work I started to feel a little heavy in the chest, now I do know that the day before I was feeling the same but thought nothing of it. Over the next 30 min I decided to do a support run down stairs and return to my desk, when I got there I was so short off breath and the pains in my chest has gotten worse. The pain started to feel like some one was standing on my chest. I sat in the office for a little bit longer and decided that it was time to go home this wasn’t feeling right. A short walk of about 500 meters and yet again I was struggling for breath as I told the boss I was going home. This was a mistake, later I found that what I should have done was to call an ambulance.

Before I left I called my wife to expect me home and then I was on the way to the docs, but a short distance in the car and I decided to go straight to the doc’s. When I got there I was told it was a 2 to 3 hour wait, but a quick description of what was happening and I was rushed straight through. When I was pass through I was taken straight to a bed and plugged in. About 30 min later the doc had come and looked me over, gave me some drugs and a horrible spray under the tongue. The next thing I new an Ambulance was called, my wife and mother was called and I was given some more drugs.

When the ambo’s got there they swapped over the different machines I was plugged into, Put a hose into my arm and gave me some more drugs. Not long after my wife and mother turned up and stood just out of reach while the ambo’s worked. A small patch was put onto my chest that would slowly give me a dose of drugs that would allow my arteries to expand and stay that way, and I was taken to the Emergency Room at the nearest hospital.

At the hospital I was introduced to an ironing board they called a bed that was located in what could only be called a hallway and plugged into a new set of machines… and given some more drugs. This small bed and set of machines soon became mine for almost 30 hours. In that time I was poked and prodded, had blood taken from me, given several doses of drugs and left to try and sleep with the normal operations of an emergency room going on around me.

While lying on the ironing board the staff was very helpful and help to try and keep my feelings and moral high, but after the almost 30 hours I really wanted to go home and no cheering up would change my mind. With my wife there we where seen by the cardiologist and was asked to do one more test before I could go. Now just to put you in the picture, for the almost 30 hours I was strapped to a bed and plugged into several machines that go ‘Bing’. During this time I was not allowed to go for a walk or do too much exercise, there was one point that I was allowed to stand and then sit back down. I did get a laugh from my wife when I had to go to the toilet, did you know that your heart rate goes up when you go… the alarms I was plugged into made sure that everyone around me did. So back to it, the doc’s wanted me to do a stress test on the treadmill, which was fun. After I struggled to get out of bed and hobble to the room id didn’t do too bad and I was allowed to go home.

Now to what happened, on the Tuesday I went to work and suffered and angina attack, this knocked me around for a while and has now changed my life. Over the next few days, right up until a few hours ago, I have been in and out of different doctors surgeries and had several tests done on me. One of those was a CT Cardio angiogram (I hope I spelled that right) where the doctors got a 3d image of my inner workings around my heart.

Today we found out several things about what had happened over those couple of days. We found that I had a high cholesterol count, and a stressful lead up to the event and several other factors which I may write about in another post (Have to talk to some people before I mention it here). But all in all things in my life need to change as this wake up call has shaken the complete household and has gotten us all worried.

I do plan on posting more about this in the future as I think it will be good for me to get it out and into the open, also as some things need to change it might allow me to get things off my chest.

But the good thing is that I have now been cleared to return to work.