Well after a night with not too much sleep – the beds here are like sleeping on an ironing board (not that I have done that before), it was time to get some exploratory work done.

The vampires had been work over night with more blood taken every 4 hours or so. I am not sure that there is any more to give.

During the morning, I had found out the name of my doctor, Justin Ardill and after some googling it showed that he wasn’t too bad a doctor but also owned a winery. Another doctor friend confirmed that he wasn’t too bad a doctor as well. 🙂

There were 5 patients today scheduled for angiograms, 3 private and 2 public and I was number 2 in the queue. The team didn’t get away from here til 2am and were now back again at 10am. Hopefully the are awake for me. 🙂

At a quarter to 12, I was wheeled in my bed to the OR – no walking around here. It wasn’t long and I was being prepped. Last night in preparation, I was shaved in 2 areas – my wrist and the nether region. The doctor checked my wrist and decided to go in there so that was a waste of manscaping down lower 😉

The team were all decked out in colourful lead coats – hey what about me.

It wasn’t long and the catheter was inserted into my wrist and you could see it on the big screen near my heart – I was awake for the whole procedure with some local anesthetic in my wrist and a sedative in my artery.

After quite a few injections of dye, a blockage was found on my right artery and a balloon and stent was inserted in through the wrist with the whole procedure finished just over an hour after being wheeled in. So at some point in time I have had a heart attack. It will be another couple of days when I found out the extent of the damage when an ultrasound is carried out.

Below are some happy snaps showing the blockage prior to the stent and what the artery looks like after the stent was inserted – quite a difference.

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I woke up this morning aching all over my chest and back. It felt like I had been doing the weight lifting exercise of my younger years but there hasn’t been any weights lifted for years.

Going back a few months to just before my 50th birthday and I undertook a big checkup with some things requiring looking at including cholesterol and weight. So then started the treadmill regime with 45 minutes / 4 kilometres each day. Over the next few months I had shed 8 kgs but each time I started, there were pains that I attributed to being unfit and worked through it.

That was until Thursday when I felt really bad and even though I recovered quickly, “muscular pain” persisted.

Fast forward to today and after waking up to the aches, I thought a chinese massage would be the go but on the way I thought a chat with the doctor might be a better option.

It was getting close to knock off time at the Medical Clinic and when I asked the receptionist to chat with a doctor, her reply was that “we normally call an ambulance for that”. I convinced her that it wasn’t that bad and I was soon chatting with the doctor.

After explaining my pains when exercising, his thoughts were with angina but it still needed to be checked out. A phone call to the Chest Pain Centre and I was booked in for an immediate admission. Now just how to get there.

I rang Jenny and she was still at Mt Barker for softball. A call to my brother and he was also on the way to Mt Barker. Finally I got onto Dad for the ride down. All said why not an ambulance and the doctor had said that it was not an emergency and even offered to take me when he knocked off.

On arrival at the Chest Pain Centre, I was the only customer so there was immediate attention. It wasn’t long before being hooked up to the “machine that goes bing” and some blood taken.

The results indicated that I had indeed suffered some sort of heart issue but would require more tests to determine the extent so the Cardiac Care Unit was going to become my home for the next 4-5 days. 🙁