Today, I turned 17 again.
This day in 1994 was spent by me lying in a bed in Coronary Intensive Care at the nearby hospital with my family and mum watching over me.
The Grim Reaper had had a go and failed, due to the actions of the Paramedics and Doctors who pumped me full of Streptokynase earlier on.
I had suffered very uncomfortable back pain in the small hours at home and was duly rushed to casualty......blue lights but, sadly, no siren. I passed out on the trolley and if that had been the end, it would have been a good way to go !
I'm sure it would have been if I'd been somewhere remote but the hospital was only 3 minutes away. Sadly now demolished.
An experience like that certainly changes your outlook on life. I no longer bother about lifes trivialities...things I have no control over or don't really affect me worry me not a jot.
An example yesterday was a letter from the council giving a date for the replacement of out pavement......adjacent roads have been done with Bitmac run-ins and the original flags reset. We are to just have Bitmac. Some of the neighbours seem to have blown a gasket over this. It would have been nice to have the flags but I have no influence over that and I'm not going to pull a garden chair up to the gate and sit staring at the new pavement...life's too short. At least I won't be tripping as much now.
Anyone else seen the light and chilled after a crisis ? I would think my experience was fairly common.
Just glad to be here still...wasn't to keen on the alternative !
Ted
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I know what you mean, I have dodged the reaper twice thanks to skilled medics. It changes your outlook dramatically.
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I too have seen the light. After a recent stroke I realised that it's pointless getting wound up about things we have little control over, and the things we do have control over aren't life or death anymore.
Packed the fags in five months before the stroke but still, one less hurdle I suppose. At least it saved me from a lecture in hospital:)
Came to realise that what happened to me could happen to anyone at any time in their life regardless. It certainly changes your outlook on life, that's for sure. I count myself extremely fortunate I got off lightly, getting stronger each day and hope to recover fully. Appreciate it could have been much, much worse and count my blessings.
Bran flakes, fresh fruit and salad from now on. I probably won't live 'till I'm 100, it'll just seem like it... :)
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This certainly runs in my family and I suspect I will have a heart attack one day because I am prone to getting worked up very easily.
My grandma had a heart attack in April that year, a very upsetting time for all of us, since then she has coped with the loss of my grandad and her oldest son who died of a heart attack just months after cancer got my grandad.
My grandma's health is no longer that great, but then she is in her early 80's and has all the usual diabetes which is a common cause of heart trouble.
It was so nice you made a recovery for your mum as well Ted, I saw my grandma when she lost my uncle and that is something you don't want anybody to ever go through. Even six years later she is badly affected by it.
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Massive operation a year and a halve ago now.Cancer nicely on the mend I lost a lot of weight but I needed to.I should have been a gonner years ago,fell out a window on top of a car as a child
Got run over by a lorry lucky I was between the axels.Drowned nex door neighbour saved me.Working in a ship crane caught a beem I didn't see it Big Joe a chap who I was working with took the brunt.Ammonia leak on a loading arm we had to jump for our lives.Take every day as it comes when your number is up it is.Storm at sea in a 150 ton coaster how we got out that one I still dont know.
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Can I just say don't ever forget those close to you.
It has a devastating effect on them too.
However efficient and self contained they appear they have had to contemplate a life without you.
You've always been the rock they've leaned on, now they have to appear to lean on you, but have an interim plan if the worst happens.
In the darkest hours this plan is never far away, you learn to never look too far ahead, you feel insecure but have to be so strong.
It's not always easy.
Just a thought from the 'other half'
Pat
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Agree 100% Pat
Wife is a very strong character, been through the mill from an early age for reasons I'd rather not go into, cancer in early teens and other serious illnesses. Must have been a terrible shock for her but she's very good at not showing it.
Parents in law came to visit for a few days, normally stay with us but booked into holiday flat. Father in law now in hospital with a clot on his lung and pneumonia (in his 80s)
It never rains but it pours, eh?
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This is an interesting thread Ted.
In the last couple of years we have had 2 major incidents
our house went on fire
we went a driving holiday to France with our friends and they rolled their car across the motorway and were lucky to survive.
We weren't in the house so although there were a lot of "what if we had been", the impact it had on us most was that we lost all the contents of the loft - you know, the stuff you put up there for posterity that you can't chuck out. Well wevno longer get emotional or teary eyed about things like that and are a lot more ruthless about what we chuck out. If we haven't used it for a few months and have no plans to do so, it gets chucked rather than being kept "just in case".
Re the crash, friends were blued and twoed to a Paris Hospital, immediate treatment etc and they vowed that this would change them forever. Nearly killed, life is for living, shrouds don't have pockets etc. However if you speak to them now, everything is the way it was pre crash, same worries, same issues and no obvious sign of change.
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Good thread Ted, and thanks to the other posters for many thoughtful replies.
I had a few minor wake-up calls last year of the non life-threatening kind, culminating in a couple of stays in hospital.
It caused me to make one or two vows to change habits and lifestyle, and do you know what - I like the changes! Much more relaxed and calm about things these days, and let so many more things just roll on by without concern.
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Spot on, Londonboy. It seems most of us demics feel the same way after a bit of a nudge.
Ted
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17th Birthday today. - Old Navy
