Hubris, if you haven't heard of it before, is an ancient Greek concept in which someone gets a bit over-cocky and pisses the gods off, causing them to send some thunderous shitbolts his way as a form of revenge, knowing that this would shut the bastard up. For as long as I can remember, I revelled in my ailment dodging, my body's refusal to succumb to human illnesses, the tiny return I got on my NHS contributions and the suggestion that I was in fact some kind of Kryptonian immortal.
Then last week I had a heart attack.
No one saw this coming, but on reflection I might have avoided it by not eating a double round of bacon sandwiches every day for nearly 6 months. And not pouring a large dollop of tomato sauce and hubris on each round. And occasionally a slice of Swiss cheese. Or if I hadn't gone to Edinburgh a few weeks before. It's no coincidence that this was my first trip to Scotland, where heart attacks are viral and as a foreigner I don't have the immune system to cope with it. I think I caught heart attack up there.
I'll spare you the details of the attack, as clearly those who witnessed it pretty much shit themselves, while I decided to indulge in some distracting gallows humour. (Except to say that it was nothing like it is on telly or in films, where someone just clutches their arm and keels over into the tomato plants. I almost wore out the carpet scratching at it in pain for 15 minutes before the paramedics arrived.) Instead, I want to inject some typically lavatorial, black comedy into the story of my 2 days recovering in hospital.
It's true, that in situations like this, knowing that an ambulance is on the way, you do reflect on your choice of underwear; and I was reassured to remember that I had chosen a recently purchased, nicely-fitted pair that was 2nd from the top of my pile, over an old baggy pair right on top, which was detaching itself from the elastic waistband and beginning to show signs of perishing around the gusset.
Once in theatre, about to be moved from trolley to operating table, fully conscious as it was only an angioplasty, the medical staff - nearly all young women - instructed me to help them get my t-shirt and then trousers off by pulling them down over my bum. Not a problem. Then someone said, "Sorry, and your pants, please." "Not my pants," I moaned, but these were still whipped off and I groped at the theatre gown they'd put over me in order to cover my essentials. Then they helped shift me onto the table and I asked, "What about my socks?" I was told I could keep them on. "No, take them off, I look silly." You have to keep some dignity.
They had to stick a tube in through a vein from wrist to heart in order to inject some dye to help locate the blocked artery and then pop in two stents to widen it; and they had a choice of going up through my groin or from my wrist. Once I saw them shave my wrist, I worked out why this was the preferred option: They'd saved themselves 20 minutes and two bottles of shaving foam.
I was wheeled onto a ward to recover and told not to get out of bed for 24 hours. In order to go to the toilet, I could use a cardboard urine bottle or if necessary (it wasn't, as I'd crimped a few out already over the weekend) a bed pan for anything more solid. I was told to drink as much water as I could and it would be easy to roll over onto my side in bed to use the urine bottle or they could help me stand up and do it. I opted for the rolling over. But this didn't work. Obviously. I could have guessed it wouldn't. After all, when blokes in public urinals have a case of the nervous 'no-go', they don't decide to lie on their side on the toilet floor to try it from that angle. Therefore after many hours of horizontal futility, I got myself onto my feet to try with the support of gravity. At first, still nothing, except the anxiety that someone would walk in on me with my gown gaping open at the back and my arse hanging out. Which they did. Eventually, come about 2am (12 hours since my last wee, pre-heart attack), the dam burst.
The acoustics at that quiet time of night in an airless hospital ward, with an empty echo chamber of a cardboard urine bottle providing a receptacle, meant that a man pissing like a horse could sound like the Niagra Falls. Almost a minute into the exercise, you start to wonder how close you are to filling it. You can't see. You shake it to try and gauge how full it is, because it's certainly getting heavy; so heavy, you fear dropping it. You wonder if you'll feel it before it reaches the lip. But, as luck would have it, I finished just before it reached what would have been labelled the 'fill level' if it had been a Pot Noodle pot. Then, as you place the container on its flat side on the table next to your bed, the spout sits at a 45 degree angle, so you worry again it will pour out; but I was about 2 mm short of that happening. The next morning I filled two more within 15 minutes of each other. A nurse came to take my blood pressure and went to move the trolley where I'd placed them both..."WATCH OUT!!!" I panicked, and just in time, we averted a curtain of warm piss being sent across the bay.
There were 4 bays on my ward. Opposite me was an old Jamaican man with the deepest bass voice you've ever heard. He'd clear his throat in the night and it sounded like an earthquake. Then you'd hear him mutter, "Mercy, Jesus!"
Next to me was a Romanian man, who got told off for giving himself oxygen, because it was there, why not. He didn't speak English. They'd ask him a question and he'd reply, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, no."
But at an angle from me was the world's more boring, moany old bugger I've ever had the misfortune to lie and listen to for 48 hours. He must have phoned every one on his contacts list to "update you on how I'm doing" which meant repeating the same sorry-for-himself story of his ailments in a loud, monotone monologue that would have sent each listener diving for an open oven door. Without noticing the irony, he'd finish each long call with, "But you know me, I suffer in silence." He was in for a stroke, but my guess is that he also had a charisma by-pass, which had obviously been a success. You'd feel sorry for him, as I sometimes do for life's dullards, but he was both creepily flirty with the nurses and a bit entitled in terms of his moaning at them for things he wanted done. Charmless nurk. And he didn't draw the curtain when pissing into his cardboard pot.
I had a space age bed, which adjusted itself every 5 minutes to stop you getting bed sores. The mattress would mould itself to your body, by sinking where you lay and rising in the gaps. So you'd be trying in vain to sleep at night, hear the buzz of the bed kicking into action and feel something work its way up the crack in your arse. (I assume this was the bed. It was dark, but I didn't think anyone had wandered over.)
Finally, a word about the food. My hopes were raised when I first arrived on the ward and was given jacket potato and beans. The latter are of course "good for the heart" but made me want to fart and with those acoustics, this was not the place. Some severe muffling was required. But come the next day, I opted for beef stew for lunch and macaroni cheese for dinner. Because I love both. Or rather I love my wife's version of both. The potential to ruin both dishes is limitless I found. The beef stew was fat and gristle in tasteless, phlegm-textured gravy with a dumpling as soft as an overbaked biscuit. The macaroni cheese challenged me to work out if I should eat it or use it for grouting between the bathroom tiles. The mashed potato it was served with, I hid under my pillow so I could start to tunnel out in the night.
So, there you go, every cloud has a brown lining or at least something dark to laugh about afterwards. Until the next time (blog, not heart attack), adios!
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