Being Unwell

Let me start by saying I am now fine, but one day last week was heavy. I use the term heavy because it sums up what a fright it is when you’re suddenly unwell. I have long been fortunate with my health but yesterday was scary. I will, in fact, not post this blog until a few days have gone past since I want those of you who care to know that I have fully recovered before you read this. I am, in fact, now back to normal, but that day last week was a different story.

It started normally enough, for those of you who have traveled to wonderful foreign parts in a big cruise liner that is. I awoke in my beautiful room on the Golden Princess and looked out over the Mexican town of Mazatlan. I was eager to explore it and went to the bathroom to undertake my ablutions. There was a towel on the floor, I bent to pick it up and that was when the world began to spin on its axis in a most peculiar and undesirable manner. I felt awful, and it was unlike anything I had ever suffered from before.

I nudged my wife and sought help as I collapsed on the bed. She summoned the medical staff who first told her to get me to walk down to the medical center. I was totally incapable of unaided walking, so they sent a nurse with a wheelchair. I would normally do anything rather than allow myself to be wheeled in my pajamas through a shipload of fellow travelers, but somehow none of that mattered.

After arriving in the medical center they quickly took my blood pressure, which was unusually low, as was my heart rate. I then started to feel even worse and they now wheeled me to a more complicated room, full of monitors and curious machinery. But I have to admit I was unable to focus on anything as consciousness begin to ebb and flow. I felt like being violently ill as they were taking blood samples, and started pumping me with saline and injecting me with heart stimulants. I heard them call out my blood pressure readings as I was now being attended by two doctors and a couple of nurses who were simultaneously hooking me up to heart monitors. The readings were the kind of numbers you witness on U.S. television programs like “House” or British counterparts like “Casualty” just before the slap on the electric shock paddles. It wasn’t good. But the good news for me is that they soon got everything going again.

Within a short while my blood pressure started to move towards more reasonable levels and the color apparently came back to my cheeks. To be honest it scared the hell out of everyone in the room. Even the medical staff admitted afterwards that they were very concerned, but not half as concerned as I was when they were using me like a pincushion.

I then had to stay under total observation for twelve hours as a safety measure and then I was allowed back to my cabin. We missed Mazatlan totally and then we had to stay on board when the ship berthed outside Cabo St. Lucas in Baja, California. Do you know what, I couldn’t care less as I am just thrilled to be able to write this and to say thank you to Doctor Mark Mason, and the nurses Mark and Faye who were terrific to me when I needed them to be efficient, cool under pressure and unfailingly honest throughout my small ordeal.

I shall not bother the reader with my medical condition other than to state for the record that luckily there was absolutely no damage to my heart and it was not a heart attack. I’ll still be here, writing for a long while yet.

I would like to say an especially big thank you to my wife, Avril. Without her dealing with this emergency quickly and with great determination it could have all got a lot worse. She was very brave, bright and wonderfully supportive. Sometimes we lose sight of the more important things in life, we look at the bills, or the petty annoyances and people that aggravate and forget what really makes the world go round. My father used to say you’ve got nothing if you haven’t got your health. He was right, and how lucky I am, that today I’m here and I’m back to normal. I’ll sign off by wishing you all well. Tomorrow is another day.