It was a gradual, sinister assault. My instincts, dulled with complacency and devoid of fear, colluded with the onslaught, dismissing it as an imaginary irritation. Early morning warnings, strange intrusions that disturbed my sleep and shadowed my movements over days, were ignored until their frequency and intensity invaded my consciousness and hammered relentlessly at my stubborn naivety. Only when denial succumbed to spasms of anxiety did I concede there might be a problem.
But too late! Too much time had elapsed; too many warnings ignored. In the dim light of the deserted platform of the underground railway the shadowy spectre attacked, spiralling me into chaos and panic. Galvanised into action I cried out for help. Railway staff quickly responded, an ambulance was called, and the assailant vanished. I was heaved onto a stretcher and freighted publicly and unceremoniously through the city’s centre, to the ambulance vehicle.
Plying me with oral and intravenous therapies, the ambulance officers radioed for the nearest vacant emergency bed. They didn’t say, and I didn’t then know, that a tentative culprit was under scrutiny. I was to learn that the identity had been subsequently confirmed from a line-up of suspect pathology and radiology tests.
My assailant was a major blocked artery. For three days it had been sending out warning symptoms, which I had dismissed as minor irritations.
The slight numbness in my left fingers had masqueraded as my hand having gone to sleep, convincing me that I had been lying on it. The insidious persistence of discomfort in my left forearm over the next couple of days was rationalised as a minor, temporary inconvenience. The cumulative depletion of energy levels became the result of ‘doing too much.’ ‘Listen to your body,’ is my mantra for days like this.
So I listened, slowed down, and had a heart attack.
I didn’t know then that fifty thousand Australians die of heart disease every year. Neither did I know that heart disease is the single most common cause of death for women. I didn’t know that I would have to reconcile to a new reality; that my body, so taken for granted, was suddenly vulnerable; that age, which I’d worn as an emblem of endurance, was now a signpost on a finite journey.
As the trolley trundled through the emergency entrance of the old, inner city hospital, I felt a curious detachment from this surreal environment. The white, shapeless hospital gown swathed me in an unaccustomed acquiescence, a passive acceptance of hospital routines and protocols.
Divested of all but my name, I lay on the emergency bed and waited for someone to tell me about me.
Next episode The Hospital next week
BedBylines 