Another option was to have a heart transplant. So we started looking at the option about having an operation, and I went for lots and lots of tests and many of the tests, I can't even remember most of the tests I had because I had so many. And one of them, there was a lumbar one to test, I remember that one, taking a marrow reading and they took that from the lumbar region and then they did a biopsy and they took a vast amount of x-rays. And in the end they decided that it wasn't a good..it wasn't a good idea to operate because they believed that just putting me on to a life support machine would kill me. Because all the pipes supplying the heart were also, in their view, possibly calcified and wouldn't be able to be connected to pipes and that's why they couldn't put me on a life support machine.
This is the problem with the system up there, they're not very precise in exactly what they say to you. They're not very good at communicating. It was one of the worst places I ever went for communications. And at the time I was taking warfarin, that would cause a problem, the calcification would cause a problem, there was a number of things that I can't remember now. Because to be honest, when you're sat in that little room and he walks in and he brings a nurse with him, I said to [wife] 'It's no good', cause as soon as I saw the nurse you observe the body language.
So I walked out of the place totally numb, dumbfounded and I think that was the worst thing my wife ever said at the time since we'd been married when we went outside, 'Don't worry, there's people worse off than you'. And I couldn't believe she'd said it. And I understood, I know what she meant because when we were there, there were people 10/12 years of age being pushed around in wheelchairs with the trolley following them with the oxygen. But your illness is relevant, it's your illness, it's your pain, it's your discomfort. You can't put yourself into the place of somebody who might be worse off than you. So although I can sympathise with them I still don't want to be like I am now. I'd like to have had a heart transplant. And I had this discussion with the consultant in as much as 'quality of life', because he once said, 'We'll take a chance and do the operation on you in the 11th hour or when your 'quality of life' is such that you've nothing to lose'. |
