Ok, the house sale is back on, people at the bottom of the chain have a first time buyer making an offer, survey and mortgage offer has been done and we’re just waiting for local authority searches now, so we could be exchanging in a week or two and looking to complete at the end of August.

In the meantime, I’ve had a heart attack.  July 1st, 6am.  I awoke with chest pain, different from my usual Printzmetal’s Angina, took it to be indigestion and went back to sleep.  Woke again, and the burning, crushing pain in my chest just increased, so I took my GTN spray and it abated.  Oh dear, I knew it was trouble then.

Corinne asked if I needed to go to hospital, I said “I’ll go if it happens again”.  Big mistake, by saying that it was a case of “if you feel that way, you’re going now”.

7:30am-ish in A&E at East Surrey Hosital saw us being faced with a Hungarian doctor who couldn’t find a vein if he’d used an ultrasound machine.  Oh, that’s right, he did!  And still couldn’t get a bloody vein.  9 needles later I looked like a smackhead after a busy weekend.

A few ECGs later and I was moved into AMU, there being no beds on the cardio ward.

It was decided, eventually, that I had had a heart attack and that I was to undergo an angiogram.  The following Monday (this day being Tuesday).  I became rather stroppy and said that I wasn’t going to sit in the hospital over a weekend doing nothing when there were no doctors available and the sun was shining outside.

I was moved onto Cardio day-ward on Wednesday night which was great, as it was quiet and I had a decent night’s sleep.  Thursday I watched patients come and go for operations but never made it onto the list myself.

Friday morning and I was on the list, but the angiogram machine was broken.  They finally fixed it around 10:15am and 45 minutes later I was wheeled into surgery.

They discovered that my two main arteries were rather buggered, so shoved a few stents in the right one and told me that I’d have to come back for the left in a few months.  I told them we were moving abroad in a few weeks, so they said they’d sort it out.

My wonderful wife was by my side almost every waking minute during this entire period.  It’s the first time we’ve been apart overnight out year of marriage.

We both believe that things happen for a reason and the delay in the house sale allowed me to get the treatment I needed, without which I probably wouldn’t have made it through more than another few years.

My 40-60 a day cigarette habit is now down to, well, none!
3 weeks later and no cigarettes, although I had a puff on a cigar in my dreams last night – does that count?

On the mend, lots of cardio physio, been swimming with Corinne and attending anti-smoking sessions, just thinking of working again stresses me out completely, so we’re taking one day at a time.