Yesterday was eventful! All the previous night I had been having a strange feeling in my chest. It was as though my heart was racing but not at a steady beat! When I woke up in the morning the problem was still there and I was feeling a bit light headed. I couldn't check my blood pressure, the machine just couldn't cope with what was going on; there was a samba band inside me!


I called my doctors for advice at 8.30am. Normally it takes a week to get an appointment, but 30 minutes later I was stood in front of her, a lovely person who sure didn't look old enough to be a doctor :-) but knew exactly what she was talking about.


She sent me to the nurse for an ECG and then 2 minutes later I was back with the doctor. My pulse was 140 and it was so erratic that the graph could have been a Lake District map. She said, "we need to get you to hospital". At that, I think my heart beat jumped another 20!


Within 30 minutes I was in the Carlisle Cumberland Infirmary! I thought, as I went into the building, thank God I've never criticised the doctors or nurses here on my Blog, just the under resourced system that they have to work in. But then hell, do they know that or have they just listened to the sound bites on radio and TV?


A lovely doctor called Jackie looked after me and I can't give my experience any less than 100% yesterday. I had my heart, liver and kidney functions tested and all sorts of other tests that I pretended to understand, and after over 9 hours and having seen a consultant, they let me go home. I have to go back for a heart scan as an outpatient, but all signs are that this will be routine.


After all that's happened in the past year between me and the hospital, it would have been very unfair of me not to Blog this experience, because the mass of people, like Jackie, are doing their best for us 24/7 and they are wonderful people.


Beverley of course was as good as she always is and no praise is high enough for her. xxx