A normal morning, not hurrying, leisurely breakfast (I am retired!) and started pottering in the garage and around the house, when a slight, and I mean slight pain started in the solar plexis area of my chest, accompanied shortly afterwards by profuse sweating all over and my wife saying ‘you look pale’.

Now that’s quite a thing to say of me because ordinarily I’m quite, how shall I put this; swarthy. My dad was as well, I pick up the sun very easily and tan quickly using factor 20 of course. So for me to be pale was unusual to say the least. I sat down for a minute or two then suddenly I was feeling very poorly and rushed to the loo, where I vomitted profusely. Another first, I haven’t done that since my early twenties when I drank too much whisky. I felt absolutely awful, and the pain was still there. My wife suggested that I lay down, so I went upstairs and immediately started feeling sick again, which I duely did. My wife dialled 999 and an ambulance was there within 10 minutes. They did cardio tests on me in the house then invited me to the ambulance where they connected me to heart monitor and I started trying to vomit again but only spit came up. They took me to the hospital of my choice and I was taken into the ED. More tests, blood and cardio, moved to another room where I spent the next 3 hours.

They then moved me to ward G9 where my dinner order turned up. Various doctors spoke to me and indicated I might have had a mild heart attack because a blood component showed slight damage to the heart. The cardiologist will be seeing me and I may be given an angiogram/heart monitor or possibly a stent. But the upshot is I’m in overnight at the very least. I haven’t been in hospital since 2004 and that was for a parathyroidarectomy, removal of two enlarged parathyroids which control calcium levels. Then, I was in for 10 days, it was awful. Hopefully I won’t be in that long this time. More updates later.

Anyway several things happened today. I had another ‘turn’ but nowhere near as bad as the first one. I had 5 doctors and nurses around me sorting me out with IV drips and injections and tablets… Recovered from that and booked my wife and daughter in for a visit at 2.00pm. They had only been here 15 minutes, and the staff rushed in and said they were taking me down for an angiogram NOW! So I was rushed down to the cardiac lab area on my bed, and lay for an hour and a half, looking at the wall and eventually the nurse came and said sorry an A&E patient has taken priority so I was bumped out. Oh well there’s always tomorrow. Hospital isn’t bad it’s the staff that make it and some of the less noisy patients. There’s a bloke 4 beds down who hasn’t stopped talking since I got on the ward 36 hours ago. The trouble is the old boy in the next bed is answering him occasionally but mostly it’s this bloke beating his gums about not much really.