Monday 11th March.

Pleasant surprise this morning - at 11 a.m. my good friend Graham Turner came into the ward with with several recent issues of The Antique Dealers' Gazzette for me. He knows I no longer take it regularly. I should explain that Graham is the organiser of the monthly Long Melford Antique Fair which I attend. It is, these days, a quite unique village hall antique fair.  Graham enforces the the date line quite firmly, although, as all his exhibitors are professional, and fairly specialised, antique dealers, I think they're all pretty good about keeping to the date line rule(which to my mind is set far too late anyway. When I started exhibiting at the Snape Maltings Antique Fairs in the seventies, the date line was was 1830 - and that always seemed  a good cut off date for antiques - after that date we're well into the industrial revolution).
I do realise that I haven't yet told you what Graham's  dateline for the Long Melford Antique Fair is : and I blush to reveal that he has set it at 1930 !!!! He says that this is done to  'include Art Deco stuff', which he assures me many people collect. If true, I'm sorry to hear it; although I suppose some of the ceramics of that period might be useful for target practice!    Careful Mike. Remember the blood pressure.

After lunch Ann and Matthew came in and sat with me until at 3p.m. I was wheeled off down to the Diagnostic Imaging (X Ray) Department - to have my kidneys examined. They weren't in fact XRayed but subjected to an ultrasonic sound examination. I couldn't understand why, after a heart attack, they should be interested in my kidneys, but it turned out that they suspected my kidneys might have been damaged by the medicines I've been taking for high blood pressure - or something like that. I didn't really understand it at all. I take the view that my private insides are private, and the less said about them the better - provided they continue to function satisfactorily. Ann's the nurse, and I leave all that sort of thing to her. When the medicos try and explain this sort of thing to me I just try to look intelligent and hope I nod in all the right places.

Then back to the ward- plugged back into the monitoring machine, which seems quite glad to see me, clicking, glugging and pinging to itself. I drink my afternoon cuppa, and Ann, Matt, and meself discuss the rest of the week's arrangements (as far as we know them).  I'm to go into Papworth from here on Wednesday morning, and have a cardiogramme, and possibly whatever other procedures are deemed appropriate by the cardiogramme.  Then home on Thursday, I hope.  (Fat Chance, as it eventually transpires- Should perhaps try and make it clear that most of this journal was scribbled down on a pad whilst lying in bed in the cardiac ward (C.C.U. i.e. Cardiac Care Unit) with very occasional later explanatory interpolations).
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              Tuesday, 12th March. 10 o'clock.
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I'm going to leave the strictly chronological order I've been using and go back to an incident that occurred on Thursday  a few  hours after I'd been moved up to the cardiac Care Unit Ward. It must have been in the early afternoon, because all was quiet on the ward.   There was a shout from one of the loos at the far end of the ward (it turned out that one of the patients had died in the lavatory).  Chaos broke out - people running, instructions being given and acknowledged; but it was an odd sort of chaos -with a sense of order and routine underlying it. Despite the running and shouting everyone seemed to know what their job was.
The best exampleof this was the little Chinese nurse I've mentioned earlier. I'd perhaps better clarify this description by saying that at a short distance she looked like a sturdy eight year old schoolgirl; but close up you'd realise that she's a a very confident early middle aged woman. Every so often a shout would come from the corridor  leading to the loo :-  "Phone ................." and she would call  "I'll do that"  or, more often    " I  already done that".  Her normally accentless English seemed to have become more basic - I think in a conscious effort to save time and maintain good, clear communication.   Two people raced past pushing a vacant bed into the loo corridor, and a few minutes later it came out again at high speed being pushed/controlled by four people - one in front, one behind and one at either side of it. On the bed was the patient, and on top of the patient (or kneeling beside the patient) was a Staff Nurse who I already knew slightly.  She was pumping away frantically at the patient's chest in an effort at resuscitation. As the bed swayed round a corner back into a spare bed space the pumping Staff Nurse swayed sideways and was pushed back upright by the two pushers at either side of the bed, never once breaking the pace of the pumping.

At this point the Chinese nurse ran up to my bed and drew the curtains across the front of my alcove saying  "You doan wan see this, Mike."    A moment later I realised that she wasn't shutting me OUT from the activity, but knowing that I'd had a heart attack  less than twenty four hours previously, was trying to protect me from possible worry.

About twenty minutes later, after all the excitement had died down, the Staff Nurse who'd ridden the bed so well, pushed through the curtain into my (reasonably) private alcove. She looked drained, and with tears running down her cheeks.
"Didn't make it?"  I asked.
"No" she replied,  "I've done it often enough before, but it never gets any easier - losing a patient."
"Well, I was lost in admiration at your skills as a charioteer" I assured her  "Boadicea couldn't have done better."  This made her laugh a little between the sniffles, and she sat in my bedside chair and dried herself up, before resuming normal duties.  When she left me five minutes later, she rather charmingly thanked me for my hospitality!
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