Is it really only a week since last I wrote? National Lockdown was just starting again, schools were being closed, vaccines were being rolled out and confusion reigned. The following day I suffered a heart attack and enjoyed a lengthy stay in Eastbourne District General Hospital’s A&E Department before taking a circuitous route to the Cardiac Care Unit (CCU). After a sleepless night, I had an angioplasty the following morning and was back home by 9pm, the proud owner of three shiny new stents. Whoever invented the stent and the method of their insertion into heart arteries should have won the Nobel Prize for Medicine. They are a brilliant invention and generally, with a bit of luck, allow the stentee to return to a normal, full and active life; or at least as full and active one as he or she had before.
If, like me, you have no concept of the procedure, allow me a brief explanation. Lying on a flat table under a complex X-ray machine, a very thin tube is inserted into the artery in your right wrist (or thigh, wrist in my case) with the help of a local anaesthetic. The surgeon manoeuvres the tube up your arm and into your heart where, courtesy of a constant stream of low level X-rays, he can examine the entire ticker. That’s called an angiogram. If the crucial passageways are found to be partly or even nearly wholly blocked, they can then put a stent on a tiny inflatable bulb at the end of the tube, manoeuvre it into position and inflate the bulb. The stent is a bit like a very small biro spring, except it’s a mesh construction rather than a coil. This expands on the inflated bulb to push out the sides of the gummed up (technical term!) blood vessel. When the bulb is deflated the stent remains in place and will, after a year or so, have been absorbed by the artery/vein to form a new, smooth wall. That part is the angioplasty. The whole procedure is almost painless, fascinating to watch and took less than ninety minutes. The worst part was the growing need for a pee! I can’t speak highly enough of the hospital staff who were impressively professional despite coping with the almost overwhelming pressures and stress of the Covid inundations. Apparently there are still enough stupid people out there who either believe that the virus doesn’t exist or that it’s perfectly ok for them to ignore the rules to their hearts content. I saw with my own eyes just what a critical period this is.
This experience has not changed my view on how we should have handled the pandemic. I still believe that medium to long term the cure is going to be dramatically worse than the illness. We should have done a much better job of protecting the elderly and vulnerable but allowed life to continue normally as far as possible, particularly by keeping schools running. In the short term now, the situation is very dangerous and surely we must comply with BoJo’s Regs. (As an Army officer Queen’s Regulations was our bible; not that I’m calling Boris a queen)
My week descended further into misery when on Saturday evening I was forced to dial the dreaded triple 9 and hail an ambulance ride back to A&E. Normally Saturday night in the aforementioned department can be hell on earth but with Lockdown in force there were no drunken and wounded warriors. Nonetheless, having left home at 10pm, it was 6 am before I was able to snuggle up in a CCU bed once again; over seven hours in A&E. A sleepless night so soon after the stent op wasn’t ideal. By early afternoon on Sunday, the necessary blood tests had been completed and I was assured all was in order. The continuing chest pains are musculoskeletal and not heart related……apparently. I made it home comfortably in time for a Sunday roast supper, courtesy of a worried Mrs T. She cooked the best roast parsnips I’ve had for many a moon.
The men and women at the sharp end in the NHS are dedicated professionals who for the most part constantly strive for the best, I have no doubt. But they are terribly hampered by a petty bureaucracy that is scary to witness. The amount of form-filling, paperwork and back-covering that goes on now adds dramatically to the levels of stress and burnout. Take a look at what’s demanded for a retired doctor or nurse to join the vaccine workforce as an example. Following many complaints, the number of forms required has been REDUCED to about fifteen. It’s madness and yet another example of our politically correct, arse-covering society that threatens to stifle and maim life as we have known it.
I apologise for a somewhat serious epistle on this occasion, but you may deduce why it is so….as Captain Kirk might have said.
ADayInTheStrifeOf 