There she sat, perched upon the edge of my bed as I gazed into her eyes.
My heart missed a beat, half a dozen he or so in fact as I waited for her next words, I could hardly bear it no longer.....................
No not a page from a romantic novel, but rather yours truly waiting for a Coronary Care Unit doctor to confirm to me that, lo and behold, at the tender age of 46 I needed major heart surgery....or it was curtains.
This was in 2012, and it's fair to say that up until then that this really was my biggest crisis in life, apart that is from the evening I was preparing to sit down to watch Brief Encounter and suddenly realised I had run out of teabags!!
Now, that fiasco was bad enough, but this latest message of joy was a different proposition entirely. I can remember lying in Coronary Care and to paraphrase Oliver Hardy thing to myself "Well Stephen, this is another fine mess you've got yourself into!''
The aforementioned surgery took place on Thursday 27th September, within four weeks of the 'Brief Encounter' (see what I did there) with my pretty doctor, and I am now at around 60% of where I was before my 'argument' with the surgeon's oscillating saw and all manner of tools he had at his disposal, and from which I came off decidedly second best.
Apart from a collapsed lung during the surgery, everything went ok.
When I first got home I could barely walk 100 metres, that then became 200 metres....then I managed 400 metres and so forth, and within a week I was walking half a mile.
During that winter of discontent, my aim was to get up to about 5 miles which, despite the best hindering intentions of a bit of fluid on my lungs and unbelievable muscle ache in places I never knew existed, I managed to achieve. However, my biggest focus was getting back on the bike.
Approx. 4 months after my op I decided I would have my first cycle 'sortie' down the road. 3 miles was my absolute limit that day but that didn't matter, I was back on the bike.
Over the next few weeks I put the bike on the turbo trainer and slowly but surely built up my strength and stamina, yes there were complications along the way but nothing that couldn't be overcome and by the summer of 2013 I was up to 150 miles over a 3-4 day weekly schedule and I continued to build from there.
The accompanying photo was taken in 2014, exactly two years on from that day back in September 2012, when trivial things that seemed important suddenly weren't so important.
It is a third of the way through a 50 miles bike ride and hopefully it will give encouragement to others who are facing or who have just come through a similar problem with their ticker, to tackle it head on and come out the other side.
Fast forward if you will to 2015, and a lot has certainly gone down since. I have lost good friends along the way, some to heart disease, and I have also been re-acquainted with, and made some wonderful friends through my heart journey and also my new employment at Tesco Bridgewater Extra in Banbridge, where quite frankly the support and depth of care has been both staggering and humbling, and something for which I will always be grateful.
This year two of my grafts had the audacity to block and had to be dealt with very quickly (see previous post) but you know what, these things only make you stronger.
Now I am not for one second going to say that, open heart surgery in particular is a walk in the park, it most definitely is not....your body, and mind for that matter, go through a pretty brutal ordeal.
But if you are fortunate enough beforehand, as I was/am, to get warning shots across the bow, there is no question it is life-saving surgery and, despite what at times may seem like a mountain standing in the way of recovery and progress, the road does flatten out and things do get better.
"Daddy are you going to die?"
Never have six words hit me like a bolt, than those spoken by my daughter as I lay in a hospital bed a few weeks ago, well at least not since I was once reliably informed we 'have no teabags in the house'.
It's been a while since I last posted, and in that time I have had the Grim Reaper on my case once again, he just doesn't know when to give up.
For quite some time, about 18 months to be precise, I'd had unbelievable fatigue, the type of which frankly has to be experienced to be believed, and which at one point had very nearly scuppered the charity cycle back in July.
A few weeks after getting back from the bike ride I had a follow-up Heart CT Scan done, and although deep down I knew something wasn't right, I still had managed to convince myself that all was ok.
Anyway the scan was duly carried out and, as is the norm in such matters, I was told to contact my GP in about 4 weeks time.
In the words of one of my medical team, this really was only a matter of "crossing the t's and dotting the i's", after all I had just cycled 500 miles in 5 days a relatively short time previously, so there couldn't possibly be anything seriously wrong.... right?
Wrong!
A week later as I sat on a break at work, I received a call from my cardio's secretary to inform me that he wanted to see me in a couple of days. Now, when you receive a call like this it can only mean one thing, and it isn't that they want to invite you for a coffee.
Sure enough I hadn't right planted my backside on the chair in his office when I was told rather matter of factly (wouldn't have it any other way) that two of my bypass grafts were completely blocked and were 'doing absolutely nothing'.
Seemingly it was the vein that was harvested from my left leg that was the culprit and, as anyone who has had bypass surgery knows, they give this particular vein a life span of around 10 years at best, and the fact that mine was playing silly beggars so soon was causing a bit of concern to all, all that is except myself.
Now I don't say this lightly, but it was the same when I was told I needed heart surgery back in 2012 and this time was no different. The way I see it is this, it is entirely out of one's hands and when you hear news like this you have basically two choices, you can either pour a cup of tea (or something stronger), find a dark room and proceed to crawl up into a ball and feel sorry for yourself or.....you can grab life by 'Fagan and the Two Magees' and get on with it!!
Anyway, I've since had a stent placed urgently in my left main artery stem (one of, if not the most, important parts of the heart) and will shortly be re-joining the good folks at Cardiac Rehab to 'find my limitations' in a controlled environment.
That said, next year it is still my intention to complete another longer charity cycle, (whether it will happen or not is immaterial) and then I'll 'probably' retire disgracefully. When I put this plan to my cardios I honestly thought one of them was going to chin me and I was duly thankful that he wasn't a violent chap.
But I'm a great believer in having a purpose, or a focus if you will, in life. And when you have a rather nasty medical condition, that focus becomes more important than ever, and my medical team can also see where I am coming from.
Things are still far from perfect (they never will be), but like the last time...I'm determined to get to something resembling near normality. There are literally thousands of people far worse off and I simply view my Heart Disease as an absolute nuisance in comparison.
Anyone who really knows me will tell you I am an easy going, glass is half full character, and it has taken this latest adventure with Ischaemic Heart Disease to finally stop me in my tracks.
This time round it will all be a bit different, my latest brush with Mr. Reaper has made me look at where I'm going, make a few changes and seriously re-evaluate things a bit.
Whilst it is certainly not my intention to depart this mortal coil anytime soon, it is not something I have any real control over. When I was in hospital I had cause to cancel a dental check-up, however an appointment with my maker is not something I will be able to cancel but I am entirely at peace with that fact.
Which brings me nicely back to my daughter's question, and my answer is a straightforward....... no and yes, but I will continue to live life to the best of my ability, and hopefully be around to see her grow up.
As always peeps, thank-you for listening.
