Saturday night in A &E

A minor cardio vascular incident

Graves’ disease knocked my heart out of rhythm a few years ago. Not a big deal. AFib is a common complaint and rarely life threatening. Mine’s intermittent, so not that troublesome. I carry some wee white pills that kick it back into rhythm. Most of the time they work, but not on a recent Saturday. I ignored it for a while. Heart rate 160 bpm? Sweaty and clammy? Chest tight? Breathless? Dizzy? Struggling to climb the stairs? So what. Just a doze of A Fib.

At around 10 pm, after 9 hours of symptoms, I called NHS 24 and was told to go straight to A &E. They thought of sending an ambulance. No problem, I said, I can drive. Also, I need to bring my OH who has Altzheimer’s and can’t be left alone, is that OK? Yes, drive, but if you feel worse, pull over and call an ambulance.

A hot, sweaty Saturday night in A &E is not my choice of weekend diversion, but it was remarkably calm. No queue of ambulances. No crowd. No blood. Only one drunk, and she was more entertaining than annoying. As soon as I reached triage, my symptoms subsided. I’ll just go home now, I said. Not a good idea, they said. You may have had a heart attack. So I stayed.

I used up much of the time between tests trying to track down a friend or neighbour who might rescue my OH and let him go home to his bed. A wonderful friend switched on her phone at 1 am. Undeterred by the fact she’d had a drink, she woke her son to drive her to the hospital to collect my OH.

All my tests were negative and the doc could not come up with an explanation for the episode. Should I have bothered them? Absolutely, he replied. Call an ambulance if it happens again. Don’t drive yourself.

At 3:30 am I was free to go.

I stepped out of the steamy heat of the hospital into the blessed relief of the night air and drove home.

Thank you.

Thank you, our wonderful NHS.