Life changes in an instant. Last month I went into cardiac arrest in a Morrisons parking lot. Defibrillator deployed. air ambulance to hospital. Huge drama. Touch and go.
Someone said it wouldn’t have been so bad if I had collapsed in a Waitrose car park. People can be such snobs.
Now that I’m discharged, I shouldn’t have sex for two weeks, according to the do’s and don’ts sheet I was given when I left the hospital – and even then “the general guideline is that sexual activity should be no more difficult than during the climbing a flight’. of stairs’.
But what if I lived in a bungalow? And what if I don’t have a partner or a willing partner? More things to worry about.
After a heart attack (“a frightening experience” — the magazine’s author is not wrong about that), the hospital sends the patient home with masses of pamphlets, booklets, cover sheets of advice, folder after folder of bums. It’s like going back to school and getting homework, with a built-in detention alert.
Last month I went into cardiac arrest in a Morrisons parking lot. Now I’m not supposed to have sex for two weeks, according to the dos and don’ts sheet I was given when I left the hospital, writes Roger Lewis (File image)
Recovery and processing from cardiovascular disease can take at least two months, hospital staff warned
Recovery and processing from cardiovascular disease can take at least two months, hospital staff warned. I confidently predict that it will take much longer for me to get used to my new lifestyle as stipulated by the package insert law (if ever). It could even turn out to be my death.
The activities of the first week should not be more strenuous than listening to music, watching television, making cups of tea, ‘laying the table and doing paperwork for an hour without stress’.
That’s somewhat specific – and so is (to be fair) the extent of my physical exertions at the best of times, when one of my greatest pleasures is watching old movies with Frankie Howerd (“Slap my nelly!”) and Kenneth More (“Try to do as much as possible in the time you have in the afternoon.
Week two brings the suggested ‘sexual activity’, to which ten minutes of walking on the flat and trimming a hedge can be added. In week three, “you can include rolling hills” in the wanderings, like a romantic poet wandering lonely like a cloud. It is also allowed to play snooker or darts.
Next week six I can wash the car and ‘start short sessions on a driving range at the golf club’. I don’t know who made these rules, but it’s clear that heart attack victims are seen as sex maniacs who enjoy gardening and strolling on the putting green.
I appreciate the need for exercise – to stimulate the arteries – but I really can’t see myself cycling, swimming, mowing, digging, or “moving heavy sacks of compost” after two months of cycling, swimming, mowing, digging, as ordered.
The thought of all that will give me another heart attack.
Not that I really feel like going out, but I won’t be able to go abroad or pack and lug my suitcases until after week eight: ‘Discuss with your doctor whether you are fit to travel’, says the folder.
Readers may have better luck, but I’ve never seen my family doctor, not since my childhood in the last century when they drove a Riley and made house calls.
Do GPs, I wonder, still exist outside the mind of God?
When I tried to reach mine, after two hours on the phone, I was only number 18 in line.
Everything in my experience is handled (perfectly competently) by nurses specializing in cardiac rehabilitation, pharmacists, dietitians, diabetes nursing specialists (I also have type 2 diabetes), porters, maintenance staff and ward administrators.
Occupational therapists, for example, were the ones who wheeled into my commode, which, like NHS wheelchairs, crashed flawlessly into walls.
What a company. Having my ribs shattered from CPR – performed by a passerby who fortunately knew what they were doing – I have been in a lot of pain and the opioids I have been given unfortunately cause constipation.
My insides are cement. I am instructed not to force because my heart could burst. I still feel like a pregnant walrus.
In addition to the files of advice, as baffling as it is helpful, I left the hospital with shopping bags full of medicines, blood thinners, blood clots, blood pressure pills, syringes and sprays.
Dapagliflozin, atorvastatin, aspirin, prasugrel, bisoprolol, ramipril, thiamine and glyceryl trinitrate – all of which sound like characters in Game Of Thrones.
I have to carry glyceryl trinitrate and spray it under my tongue in an emergency to open up the blood vessels and ease the chest pain.
The effect of the powerful new tablets (I take 12 a day plus four insulin injections) is that my liver is overloaded, according to blood tests. It would be worse if I breastfed, which thankfully I am not.
Next week six I can wash the car and “start short sessions on a driving range at the golf club,” writes Roger Lewis (pictured)
“The general guideline is that sexual activity requires no more effort than climbing a flight of stairs.” But what if I lived in a bungalow? And what if I don’t have a partner or a willing partner? (File image)
But on top of everything else, my gums are swollen and throbbing horribly. They also go backwards. The Finnish dentist I saw recently poked and prodded and took x-rays, and besides, I have gingivitis. I therefore have to take the antibiotic amoxicillin for the next five days. Honestly, I’m a wreck.
I think this is also the opinion of the health professionals I have come across.
When I told the cardiac rehab nurse under questioning after my discharge (over the phone – Covid is still the excuse for never meeting patients in person) that I also drank a few glasses of red wine every night, you would think I was in the Oliver Reed or F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald class of dipsomania, the alarm this has caused.
I even had to start drinking decaffeinated coffee, which I had assumed all my life was pretentious and fashionable. Real caffeine upsets the heart, I’m told. So, goodbye espresso – goodbye all fun.
Examining the literature, which is illustrated by happy-looking people waving wooden spoons, lawmakers would more or less prefer teetotal vegans.
I am not allowed to consume or even glance at garlic bread, cakes, pies, shortbread, chips, Scotch eggs, sausages, lamb, cheese, butter, chocolate, salt or orange squash.
This leaves, as my only approved shopping list, breadsticks, lentils, nuts and lemon juice and, as far as I know, absolutely nothing else. Ever again. Or I die.
In any case, I’m the perfect weight for a six-foot-tall. Unfortunately I’m 5ft 10in for a Welshman but I live in Hastings.
So the BMI needs to be watched, which was another reason I didn’t mind being in the hospital, because I had nothing to worry about. Even what I ate became part of the machine – literally, connected to IVs and screens with wires and pipes. Everything is done for you. I loved having a nurse to put my socks on.
However, as the NHS philosophy is that patients do better in their own environment, I was kicked off the ward after three days and now I sit at home, covered in bruises from the endless injections.
I’m glad I’m in the system to be monitored, and the occasional nice nurse calls. But I feel unusually vulnerable. I went out to the post office. My legs were wobbly and I felt a panic attack coming on.
Friends have gathered. Rachel Johnson asked if I wanted her to come over and put a pillow over my head.
Although out of common courtesy I have to prepare to meet the good people who resuscitated me and deployed the defibrillator. I can’t bear to hear in detail what happened when I fell to the ground. I hope they understand this and don’t think I’m rude.
As for the new me, we’ll have to wait and see how that plays out – my feeling is it’s not going to work out.