There was ward, there's a ward you go into at the hospital. I think there were 10 or 11 of us in the morning and there was another batch coming in the afternoon for the same thing, you see. You get yourself all ready, you know. And you're laying there in the bed and they come and wheel you in one-by-one it takes half an hour this angiogram does, so really, it's like a 5-hour job and then you've got to come back and lay there for two hours before you can leave, before you can dress because there's a hole in your groin you see, and you have to wait for that to heal up, well for the blood to congeal.
But the doctor comes round after all that with all the notes for each patient because he's examined them and decided what can be done for each patient. The chap in the next bed to me, he says [to him] 'Well you're going to need a triple by-pass'. Now I could hear this because this chap's in the next bed, you see. And there's one in that bed and there's one over there. And he says, then he goes to another one and he says, 'Look we can put a couple of stents in your heart, just widen the arteries a bit, that should be OK.' (Funnily enough my daughter's husband's father was in there at the same time as me for a heart attack. But he was waiting to have a triple by-pass. Yes, but he could have it, you see, I've seen him since.) But, and then they went to the next bed and said to the chap 'Yes, we'll put the stents into you and widen your arteries and you should be okay'.
Then he comes to me and he said 'Well, you've got a disease in the artery at the back of your heart'. He said, 'And the heart attack, that caused the heart attack but what happens is it destroys your muscle in your heart. So there's really nothing we can …' I didn't really understand this, you see. He said, 'There's nothing we can do for it, only a transplant', he said, 'But we don't consider transplants for anyone over 60'. And that's all he said to me! He just said, 'Is there any questions?' but I couldn't think of a thing to say, you know, who could after being told that? So I was really on a down after that. I think I suffered from depression for quite a few days after that until I saw the nurse and the other doctor, and they put me right, you know what I mean? If he'd have come and said that, if he'd said that instead of saying there's nothing we can do for you, if he'd said, 'The only thing is a transplant but because of your age we don't do transplants but we can control it by tablets'..and if he'd said that, fair enough you know, you think oh they can do something about it you know you're okay. But to say that they can do nothing and then leave you hanging on a limb. |
