It's a heart ache, nothing but a heart ache

Are you singing with me yet?  I’m singing from the safe embrace of a hospital ward after experiencing just that.   It’s been a month since my last blog which was typed while standing at the kitchen bench because I found some relief from the discomfort I was experiencing.  It is now the date that I ended up in hospital following a series of heart attacks.  My body had had enough of being ignored.  She had been hinting for a while that something was amiss.  I just put it down to being unfit despite spending a lot of time outdoors.  The more I attempted to increase my fitness the more frequent the breathlessness occurred even on the flat a short distance from my home.  Be careful what you wish for.  I purchased a book recently and kept saying I was dying to read it.   Mmmm, maybe not.
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What I have learned is that a woman’s heart attack is very different from a mans and is often dismissed as stress or indigestion by both the professional and the sufferer.  A toothache, tightness in the throat, ache across the shoulder have all been heart attacks experienced by women.  I did not think I was having a heart attack but I knew something wasn’t right and was feeling very scared.  

Suddenly, that desolate campground at the base of the rainforest listening to the babbling river accompanied by the sound of pattering rain went from being heaven on earth to my potential (ar)resting place.  I phoned my daughter who suggested I call an ambulance.  How many of us have not done that? Dismissing the idea as extreme.   Instead, while trying to make the pain go away by pacing, standing outside in the rain on the earth barefoot, inhaling as much oxygen as I could I packed down the home ready to drive despite the continual pain.    
 
My brain should have said “Call that ambulance” or “the ranger” but no.  It said, “prepare to drive”.  My brain had also learnt that what isn’t put away crashes to the ground when I drive so it told the body to pack down the home and drive to the doctors up over a steep hill into suburbia.     That natural survival instinct to move to a safer place could have been the very death of me.  Worse, others.  

By the time I arrived at the doctors my heart was happily pumping away so tests showed nothing wrong and I questioned my own sanity.   Feeling relieved and wondering if I had worked myself into a panic I cooked my daughter, who had since joined me, lunch in my home in the carpark.   All laughing and joking came to a halt as another wave of pain came over me.  This time she drove me to hospital 20 mins away.  Again, by the time I arrived the pain had subsided and I was assured it was probably just severe indigestion.  Something I never suffer from generally and on the rare occasion when I did, it felt nothing like this. 

Waiting for hours in an emergency room surrounded by people who were visibly more unwell than I.  The feeling of clogging up a health care system for a potential false alarm meant that the desire to head back to my home and back to the tranquility of the mountains was very strong.    But for my student paramedic daughter’s insistence.  I stayed.     At one point I ducked into the toilet to wash my face with my tears.   Never have I been more torn between wanting them to find something and not wanting them to find something.  Nothing wrong would mean I had just inconvenienced an overworked emergency department. 

The bittersweet news is I am now waiting for a triple bypass.  Who’d have guessed at my age and lifestyle that I would be here.  Looking around the room at the woman who surround me of different ages, sizes and ethnicities.  It just proves that sexy gorgeous women can have heart attacks too. I have also learnt that a bypass does not mean they go in around the side of the heart through a little hole. 
 
My guardian angels should have just said, “we need a break!  It’s been years since we drank our cuppa hot!”  In truth they were trying to tell me for months and now they can finally sit and indulge themselves while I wait contained.