Christmas in A&E

Up until then, it was all going so well! It was never on my Santa list to spend Christmas night in A&E but here I am. I’ve been here a few times before but always with other people. This time it’s me on my own. It’s 3.18 in the morning and I’m waiting for the blood & urine results to come back. The ECG showed nothing but as the chap doing it said ‘it only proves the heart was working while we were doing it’. Thanks.

What got me here? Well – a taxi. Never thought I’d get one at 11 on Christmas night and there was nobody to drive me. I live on my own, but bugger me the dispatcher got me one in ten minutes and stayed on the phone until it arrived. Nice chap.

I’d been out for the turkey n’sprouts bit in the afternoon after a four mile walk into and around Brighton while the turkey cooked. The plan was for me to cook it and let it rest whilst I drove it over to my partner’s place twenty five minutes down the road. She did the rest and there were four of us. I did a good job with the bird (if I say so myself) which I was assured used to be a resident of Norfolk and had been fed on caviar… or was it corn? I did all the bacony/sausagey/stuffing x two bits, wrapped the whole lot in towels and hit the road. All went well and I narrowly avoided burning her place down lighting the pud with an indecent amount of Tescos finest cooking brandy. I left them to it when party games were mentioned and drove home for a quiet evening with a Downton repeat and the new Taylor Sheridan on Paramount. The Downton one was where Carson has to discuss what he expected in the bedroom from his forthcoming bride. Excruciating but one feels for people who aren’t as relaxed over these things as I am. I ceased to be relaxed when my Fitbit which I always wear, set off an alarm. Never seen that one before. Low pulse. Below 46 to be precise. I checked it with my BP machine. It concurred. No other symptoms but the pump isn’t supposed to do that, and I don’t have a spare. It came back to normal quickly but the BP stayed highish. What to do? On my own. The rest of the world pissed or out of it. So I did what it says on a gents wall somewhere above the urinal. I phoned 111. Now that’s a surreal experience. Keep pressing options. It finds out where you are first which takes ages. Then it offers to send you a video about something or other. Then it texts you with something else and then there was a guy on the other end. It’s no use explaining anything to him. I’m not even sure he’s human. He just starts at the top of very long flow chart and says please answer all the totally irrelevant questions so we can get to the other end, which we eventually did. There was a bit of whirring and a lot of clicking and then it spat out it’s decision.

“Can you get to A&E? Don’t drive yourself”

So that’s how I got here and there’s just two of us left. The young Indian lady doctor is very smiley but my offer to come back in the morning fell on stony ground. So did my ‘white coat syndrome’ explanation for the high BP. So I wait. I think she wants to cover her arse with the tests. I’m going to see the head honcho cardiologist at this hospital anyway, in a couple of weeks, privately, to check on my longstanding minor murmur. So I guess she doesn’t want a bollocking. There’s talk of a seven-day wearable ECG but that for after Xmas no doubt.

The usual rich selection of flora and fauna from across the world keep me company. A Congolese chap that could have been a bouncer being regaled by a Polish sounding pissed bloke at a decibel level likely to cause pain. A rough-sleeper who said he was ex-forces, natch – there for reasons unspecified. Sort of bloke you’d cross the street to avoid but perfectly fine talking to him. The Polish chap must have wished everyone in Brighton Merry Christmas by the time he left. They could all have easily heard him.

Then a severely disturbed young woman in a wheelchair was wheeled in screaming and throwing herself about. More than just drugs. You see enough of that around these parts. She didn’t last long before being wheeled off to somewhere sinister.

They’ve ECG-ed me, made me pee into a very small container – might have been a test to see if I could hit it – drawn blood by the gallon and left me cannulated – in case I might need stuff putting back in me. And so we wait…

They’ve just called me back in.

Postscript. I’m back home now at 5.00am. Nothing drastic but BP still very high. She says I might need to change my pills but that’s the GP’s job and they’ve written to him. I’ve got a copy already. Bits of the NHS work very well. It’s just under two miles so I walked home along the seafront. Lovely doc lady thought it was a good idea if slightly insane. And it’s a lovely morning too. Dead calm, just the sound of a few desultory waves half-heartedly lapping the shingle. Reminded me of getting home from work, when I did, at ungodly hours. Haven’t walked around at this time of day for years. Why did I do it? Because I could, mainly.

5.35am: I’m going to bed now. Somebody open up the shop will you?

James Leary is the pseudonym of a retired passenger jet Captain.