Bish, bash, NHS, bosh

I was glad of the facility for scheduling a post for a future publishing live date on Sunday, because as any readers could enjoy (or not) the one that appeared here then, marvelling at the pure pleasure I had wrought with my simple words (ha!), I was sat at home on the sofa in my pyjamas and dressing gown in a state of blank-brained bewilderment and exhaustion.

I had written the post (and edited it the usual forty times at least) on Friday afternoon. I decided not to publish it immediately as I would normally do, but schedule it to appear on Sunday.

On the Friday evening, Mrs B and I were relaxing on the sofa after dinner when I felt an odd little flutter in my chest. And again. I started getting warm, and the odd feeling in my chest was continuing. I sort of knew what was happening, but I asked Mrs B to listen to my chest to confirm that, yes, my heart had slipped into the irregular rhythm of AF, Atrial Fibrillation again.

Quick history.
I'd had the AF before, June 2023, and was put on beta blockers, which kept the heart rate down to a more reasonable 70-80 instead of the 110-140 at rest it had suddenly become, and I had anti-coagulants as well, due to my history of stroke. I lived with it until March 2024, when I finally attended the hospital appointment for a procedure called a cardioversion. They apply an electric shock to your chest to momentarily stop the heart, and then it hopefully restarts in a normal sinus rhythm instead of the random one it has got itself into. This is done under a general anaesthetic and must be the human equivalent of "Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again?" Anyway, that worked a treat and my blood pressure and heart rate and rhythm all settled down to normal. I was cured apparently.

However, another medical issue appeared soon after - this time nothing to do with my heart. I'd started getting a bit hoarse, sometimes lost my voice completely, and I started noticing blood in my phlegm, so I saw the GP again. This time he referred me to the ENT specialists. Camera down the throat, yes, there's a polyp down low in your vocal chords, we don't know what it is so we'll operate, cut it out and then do a biopsy to find out. First we'll do scans to give the surgeons an accurate idea of where to go.

This all took a couple of months to happen, but at one stage before it I went down to the hospital (about an hour and twenty minutes journey each way) to have the throat CT and MRI scans one week, then the next week went again for a final heart MRI ordered by the cardiologists, for them to be able to officially sign me off from their care. I felt I recognised all the MRI staff by then, but I also felt like I was being assimilated into the NHS system and being gradually consumed by it.

I finally trekked down for the laryngoscopy, also a general anaesthetic job of course. When I regained consciousness, the surgeon came and told me that they hadn't been able to find anything to cut out, but they had cleaned out some 'matter of medical concern'. This was perplexing as the scans were only two weeks previous, so it must have been there then for them to carry on with doing the op. Best guess is that it been a cyst that had burst and left some discharge sometime after the scans. Sorry for that image if you're eating. But, as a relief to the thoughts at the back of all our minds, it obviously wasn't cancer.

Anyway, during the preparations for that op, I was monitored for BP and pulse a lot, and each time remarks about how low my pulse rate was were made. It was low naturally, I said. My resting rate before this all started last year was about 50-55. They said well, it's 45-50 at the moment, but it's OK, it might be your beta blockers.

Later on at a post operation GP consult locally, he noticed the same about my pulse rate. "I'm going to adjust your dosage, so the new beta blocker tablets are about half the current dose, that'll let your pulse come up to a more normal rate..." This was about six weeks ago.

And we're back, to now...
Or last weekend to be exact. It's Friday night, we're sitting on the sofa watching TV. Suddenly I'm getting a bit clammy and my heart is racing, and then it's feeling like it's settling down a little. I decided to go off and get some sleep. I thought possibly that a good rest might help, and I'd get up feeling better after that.

In the early morning, I had to get up for a wee. As I was stood finishing up, I felt the clammy feeling return, and I got really hot. I turned for the bathroom door, reached out for the handle and couldn't find it. My arm didn't seem to be able to respond to my directions. Then it briefly went dark and I collapsed and hit the floor. Annoyingly, the unconscious bit must have only been for a fraction of a second, because I was actually aware of hitting the ground. I remember thinking "Well, this is silly," but also feeling like I wasn't inclined to move once I was there.

Being presently just above 90 kilos, there were a sizeable few thumps that were the noise of first my hip, and then my shoulder and head hitting the floor. This woke Mrs B up and she started calling, to which I replied "Urrghhh". She came in, looked at me on the floor, asked me if I could move ("Urgghh,") went white and dialled 999.

Fast forward to arriving at the Emergency Department at about 6.30 am Saturday. It's a different hospital to the one I had got familiar with through all my previous health adventures, both last and this year. They took some blood for tests, and hooked me up to the usual BP and pulse monitors, then I was trollied off to the Resuscitation ward. I was completely conscious and normal by this stage, and was in fact having quite a chat with the paramedic who sat in the ambulance with me for the one hour journey down here. Turns out he lived not far from me and had a good tip for a website for buying cheap Crocs as well (he'd noticed I was wearing a pair). He also asked me if I felt alright because my pulse rate was varying between 110-150 BPM.

A long time passed. The Resus ward was probably about eight beds, and there was a lot going on. I was seeing a nurse come and take observations from me about every fifteen minutes, to a soundtrack of groans and wails from other patients obviously in a lot more distress than myself. Eventually a doctor came and listened to me recount my history with AF and stroke, and the recent op and medication change afterwards. He went off again, possibly to do his crossword or something. After quite some time he was back, and explained that they were going to do a cardioversion on me a little later that day.

Excellent. Another restart. I thought perhaps it would be easier if they just fitted a little black button on me somewhere, then I could do it at home by poking a straightened out paperclip in the little hole.

This time there was no general anaesthetic and a team of about four specialists with me in a theatre. No, this was to be done by himself and a senior nurse, in the ward right there, with me mildly sedated. No forms, paperwork, or pre-ops phone calls six weeks before, or indeed six month waits for the actual thing in the first place. Just hang on here a minute, we'll just get ourselves and the machines ready, then we'll get on with it, OK?

Or as Mrs B called it all afterwards, bish, bash, NHS, bosh.

I was home again by three pm, BP and pulse now normal. I now carried marks like sunburn on my chest and back, outlines of where the electrode pads they stick on there to apply the shock had been. I remembered nothing about the procedure actually happening, just the doc telling me he was putting the sedative in now, then the nurse telling me afterwards it all went well. 

It took two shocks apparently, the first not powerful enough to do it, the second one they turned it up a bit (but not to 11). Discussion with the doctor after the procedure resulted in him restoring my beta blocker to the dosage that had been working fine before the GP fiddled with it. His opinion was that the GP probably panicked a bit about the low pulse reported before my throat operation, but that if I have no symptoms and felt fine with it being low (as I said before, normal for me was not much higher than they'd been seeing anyway), then they were happy too.

I spent Sunday in a bit of a daze, had to return to the hospital for a follow up CT scan and consult the next day, and am now officially resting at last. But my brain has obviously kicked in to the extent were I felt I should write this down while it's still fresh. 

So that's what was really happening while the two or three of you were reading about me taking photos. I won't be scheduling this for a future posting, I don't want anything else untoward happening while it's waiting to go live.