Oh.
I'm in a bit of a daze. It's Thursday the 18th of October and I'm sitting down to do coursework. Carrying on as usual, nothing wrong except that I could do with a bacon roll. But I want to go over yesterday and for that I may need to explain a few things that may not be very clear to you and that would be because they are not even very clear to me.
Yesterday I was feeling a bit delicate. I had gone out on Monday to watch the football but about 5 minutes in it was clear Scotland were losing so we gave up and turned our attention to anything but football. We went from the sports bar to hive at midnight. I was absolutely skint, I had a tenner to my name and still managed to make it last until three am. I was drinking this AMAZING drink called "Popped Cherry": shot of Jager, shot of vodka and cranberry juice in a glass for £2.50. Anyway, three am came and I walked home, up towards the festival theater and wanting to get home quickly I took the shortcut. You should never take the short cut. It's what news stories and crime watch reenactments are made of. Thankfully I got home fine and stripped and lay in the dark. I started to have a coughing fit and was sick in my mouth, for some unknown reason I decided squirting it out of my mouth onto the bed would be a good idea. It wasn't. I had to get up and clean it. This was at quarter to four in the morning so at ten am my alarm went off. I had a hospital appointment, usually I'd roll over and not go but today I just felt like being a grown up and dragging myself into the real world. I'd been doing that a lot recently - acting normally rather then irrationally and angrily. I walked down and missed one bus and got on the next one, as usual I got to the hospital half an hour early, So I sat in the general reception area texting my mate Rachael a load of bollocks about cake. Then at twenty to three, five minutes before my appointment I went through the door into the cardiology department.
Walking up to reception I felt quite happy, I wasn't feeling delicate anymore, don't get me wrong if you shook me I'd probably have passed out but other than that I was in a 'walking with a floaty head' mood. I told the woman my name and I was told to sit on the left as I turned around I noticed everyone in the waiting room was sitting on the right hand side. The woman said they were there for flu jags, I made a joke about her just wanting me to be alone and we giggled and moved on as I sat down. Then I went to be weighed, have my height measured and blood pressure taken. Everything seemed fine, so I was taken right away to the changing area, I hate this bit of a check up. You go into a room, strip to the waist and put a gown on. Sounds fine, right? Then you go and sit in the waiting room stripped to the waist, no bra, no support just a gown with other people in gowns. Not too bad? They're not the only ones waiting. Relatives and others waiting for other kinds of tests. All with clothes on and support if they should choose it. Us? All balancing our stuff on ourselves trying to hide any lumps and bumps. Maybe that's just me...
Anyway, I heard my name being called when I was still in the changing room fiddling with the ties on the gowns, I sat and waited and was called again by someone else, it seems the other nurse had moved on to a curly haired lassie beside me. I got someone else as a result of my failure with the ties. I walked into the room to get an ECG, nothing new to me. I had to take off my wellies and untuck my jeans from my socks and undo the ties so the woman could put little stickies on me and take the ECG and she was pleasant enough chatting away. She asked me what I had wrong with my heart and I said "to be honest I don't know, no one really explains it so I can fully understand it." and after her guessing away I go "That's it! I knew the name of it - Tetralogy of Fallot. But I still don't know what it means it's all Latin and means something to you guys cause you have studied it but I don't get it." She mumbled something about Tetraology meaning something to do with four and Fallots being the guy who discovered it. It sounded like she didn't have a clue either.
So, I came out of that and went back into the waiting room after shoving my wellies back on and wait to see the cardiologist. "Taylor Corrigan?" she said looking at me. She knew who I was, she used to treat me as a child in the Sick Kids Children's Hospital but she is quite intimidating. But that day she wasn't so much so because she was smiling and I was smiling but she was limping, my first thought was a bunion because you know how you can usually tell why someone's limping, if it's their feet or knee or hip. She was definitely limping because of her foot but she didn't seem to mind and as I looked at her limping all I could think about was how I wanted a pair of red Doc Martins. We go into her consultation room and she asked me the usual questions "how are you? ... what are you doing now? ... are you working or are you studying? ... what are you studying? ... how have you been the past year, nothing new?... " that last one was directed at my health. I was fine although when we were all out drinking I noticed my heart was racing when we were walking it was quite scary but she didn't seem worried and when I mentioned sometimes I have a weight on my chest like wind but not, even though it does go away quickly she continued unworried and mentioned it was a common complaint among heart patients. She was interested in wither those panic attacks I was briefly hospitalized over a few months ago were still happening but when I said they weren't she moved on to the MRI pictures she couldn't find, she then told me to get dressed again and wait in the waiting room whilst she tried to find them. "No Echo? Yay!" I thought but never said, I hated the Echo, it was just plain painful; an Echo is like what they do to scan a pregnant woman but they do it on the chest area to look at the heart. Unfortunately, when I came out of the changing room a woman informed me that Doctor Burns did actually want an Echo. Great, just got changed. So I sat in the Echo waiting area dressed and slightly disappointed I couldn't avoid it but I wasn't going to go in a strop like I have done the past few years. It really hurts, that is my defense.
I could hear Evelyn, she is a lovely electrocardiographer that works at the Sick Kids as well so she has known me since I was eight months old, she has a big board full of pictures of the kids she sees in her room in the sick kids and my picture is still there. My mum sees it when she's at work, she works as a domestic in the Sick Kids now. So Evelyn came over and hugged me and talked away about how my mum is and how I am and what I'm studying and how I'm not a stroppy teenager anymore. I always hope Evelyn will do my Echo because she is so lovely and she's so good at it; in, five minutes, done. Unfortunately this time I got someone else, a very nice woman who did mine the last time but to be honest I've never been told her name. So I put a gown on and lay on the bed and she turned the light off and got the machine running, I turned onto my left side as always and away she went doing the Echo, bruising me for medical reasons. I had to keep moving because she has to measure a million things on this and all of a sudden she turned the sound on. Now I should explain, on a echo, just like with pregnant woman you can hear the heart beat. But with an echo they are measuring flow and that is all I know about it. What my heart sounds like on an Echo is what my heart sounds like through a stethoscope. That's because of my murmur, when I was last in hospital the on call cardiologist let me hear my sister's heart beat through the stethoscope - boom boom, boom boom, boom boom... Mine? - whoosh whoosh, whoosh whoosh, whoosh whoosh. That was so weird for me because I had never heard my heart beat so I just assumed mine made the same boom boom Nicole's did and that the noise on the Echo was the flow of blood. Nope, that was my heartbeat. Although today it did not sound the same, it was raspy and very strange. I even said to the woman "oh, that doesn't sound good at all." She laughed and joked about having to do that again, I assumed she'd just had a bum angle. Then Dr Burns came in and had a wee nose at the machine which wasn't anything unusual, I was used to having doctors and medical staff looking at test results and machines and listening to my heart, I'm talking they would come over to introduce themselves, have a look and then I'd never see that person ever again. What I mean is they weren't on my case or helping they just wanted to see/hear Fallots. There's one strange thing about my heart condition, it's quite rare. A cardiologist is lucky to come across Fallots in his/her career and a GP would have to be very lucky. So I am used to and quite happy for people to come along have a listen/look and ask questions, it must be a treat when something like that comes across a doctors path and they could actually show students it, so yeah if it means that maybe one future doctor could better spot it in another patient twenty seconds out of my life and a cold stethoscope isn't a bother at all.
Don't get me wrong when I say "it must be a treat" I don't think I'm anything special I'm just relaying what doctors have said when they've been asking my permission to bring a few medical interns to me to ask questions and have a listen.
Anyway, Dr Burns and the echocardiographer were looking at the machine trying to find something and I thought "I hope nothings wrong". Something was. The doctor turned to me and said "You know what this mean, Taylor?" and I replied "A catheter?" only because I hadn't had a cardiac catheter in six years usually it's every two or three. She then gave a look that said "Oh shit, she really doesn't expect what I am about to say" What she exactly said next I couldn't tell you, it was all a bit of a blur. Turns out I need my "valve replaced", I say that because I don't understand what it is but apparently it's about a tube that goes from my chamber to my pulmonary artery or something. God knows.
To be very honest with you, at this point I couldn't care what it all means. I will want to know all this nearer the time right now I want to focus on getting my head around the idea of my chest being cut open and my heart being lifted out to be patched up. It's a very frightening thought, not a scary 'frightening' but a way in which I don't understand. Today I sat with my mum in Ikea having tea and talking about it and it dawned on me what the part of it all was that I was struggling with; I've had open heart surgery before, twice. Three times I have had major surgery and two of those has meant cutting open my chest. I was just a baby when all of this happened just like I was just a baby when I had my stroke. I don't remember any of it so I don't think of it as a change in my life because all I remember is having these scars and that history. Now I think I'm struggling with the idea of going through it all and remembering it, I know that I should be happy if I survive it but I am scared about it but again, it's not 'scared' it's an emotion I can't quite name yet.
Its 'pleh'.
Yesterday I was feeling a bit delicate. I had gone out on Monday to watch the football but about 5 minutes in it was clear Scotland were losing so we gave up and turned our attention to anything but football. We went from the sports bar to hive at midnight. I was absolutely skint, I had a tenner to my name and still managed to make it last until three am. I was drinking this AMAZING drink called "Popped Cherry": shot of Jager, shot of vodka and cranberry juice in a glass for £2.50. Anyway, three am came and I walked home, up towards the festival theater and wanting to get home quickly I took the shortcut. You should never take the short cut. It's what news stories and crime watch reenactments are made of. Thankfully I got home fine and stripped and lay in the dark. I started to have a coughing fit and was sick in my mouth, for some unknown reason I decided squirting it out of my mouth onto the bed would be a good idea. It wasn't. I had to get up and clean it. This was at quarter to four in the morning so at ten am my alarm went off. I had a hospital appointment, usually I'd roll over and not go but today I just felt like being a grown up and dragging myself into the real world. I'd been doing that a lot recently - acting normally rather then irrationally and angrily. I walked down and missed one bus and got on the next one, as usual I got to the hospital half an hour early, So I sat in the general reception area texting my mate Rachael a load of bollocks about cake. Then at twenty to three, five minutes before my appointment I went through the door into the cardiology department.
Walking up to reception I felt quite happy, I wasn't feeling delicate anymore, don't get me wrong if you shook me I'd probably have passed out but other than that I was in a 'walking with a floaty head' mood. I told the woman my name and I was told to sit on the left as I turned around I noticed everyone in the waiting room was sitting on the right hand side. The woman said they were there for flu jags, I made a joke about her just wanting me to be alone and we giggled and moved on as I sat down. Then I went to be weighed, have my height measured and blood pressure taken. Everything seemed fine, so I was taken right away to the changing area, I hate this bit of a check up. You go into a room, strip to the waist and put a gown on. Sounds fine, right? Then you go and sit in the waiting room stripped to the waist, no bra, no support just a gown with other people in gowns. Not too bad? They're not the only ones waiting. Relatives and others waiting for other kinds of tests. All with clothes on and support if they should choose it. Us? All balancing our stuff on ourselves trying to hide any lumps and bumps. Maybe that's just me...
Anyway, I heard my name being called when I was still in the changing room fiddling with the ties on the gowns, I sat and waited and was called again by someone else, it seems the other nurse had moved on to a curly haired lassie beside me. I got someone else as a result of my failure with the ties. I walked into the room to get an ECG, nothing new to me. I had to take off my wellies and untuck my jeans from my socks and undo the ties so the woman could put little stickies on me and take the ECG and she was pleasant enough chatting away. She asked me what I had wrong with my heart and I said "to be honest I don't know, no one really explains it so I can fully understand it." and after her guessing away I go "That's it! I knew the name of it - Tetralogy of Fallot. But I still don't know what it means it's all Latin and means something to you guys cause you have studied it but I don't get it." She mumbled something about Tetraology meaning something to do with four and Fallots being the guy who discovered it. It sounded like she didn't have a clue either.
So, I came out of that and went back into the waiting room after shoving my wellies back on and wait to see the cardiologist. "Taylor Corrigan?" she said looking at me. She knew who I was, she used to treat me as a child in the Sick Kids Children's Hospital but she is quite intimidating. But that day she wasn't so much so because she was smiling and I was smiling but she was limping, my first thought was a bunion because you know how you can usually tell why someone's limping, if it's their feet or knee or hip. She was definitely limping because of her foot but she didn't seem to mind and as I looked at her limping all I could think about was how I wanted a pair of red Doc Martins. We go into her consultation room and she asked me the usual questions "how are you? ... what are you doing now? ... are you working or are you studying? ... what are you studying? ... how have you been the past year, nothing new?... " that last one was directed at my health. I was fine although when we were all out drinking I noticed my heart was racing when we were walking it was quite scary but she didn't seem worried and when I mentioned sometimes I have a weight on my chest like wind but not, even though it does go away quickly she continued unworried and mentioned it was a common complaint among heart patients. She was interested in wither those panic attacks I was briefly hospitalized over a few months ago were still happening but when I said they weren't she moved on to the MRI pictures she couldn't find, she then told me to get dressed again and wait in the waiting room whilst she tried to find them. "No Echo? Yay!" I thought but never said, I hated the Echo, it was just plain painful; an Echo is like what they do to scan a pregnant woman but they do it on the chest area to look at the heart. Unfortunately, when I came out of the changing room a woman informed me that Doctor Burns did actually want an Echo. Great, just got changed. So I sat in the Echo waiting area dressed and slightly disappointed I couldn't avoid it but I wasn't going to go in a strop like I have done the past few years. It really hurts, that is my defense.
I could hear Evelyn, she is a lovely electrocardiographer that works at the Sick Kids as well so she has known me since I was eight months old, she has a big board full of pictures of the kids she sees in her room in the sick kids and my picture is still there. My mum sees it when she's at work, she works as a domestic in the Sick Kids now. So Evelyn came over and hugged me and talked away about how my mum is and how I am and what I'm studying and how I'm not a stroppy teenager anymore. I always hope Evelyn will do my Echo because she is so lovely and she's so good at it; in, five minutes, done. Unfortunately this time I got someone else, a very nice woman who did mine the last time but to be honest I've never been told her name. So I put a gown on and lay on the bed and she turned the light off and got the machine running, I turned onto my left side as always and away she went doing the Echo, bruising me for medical reasons. I had to keep moving because she has to measure a million things on this and all of a sudden she turned the sound on. Now I should explain, on a echo, just like with pregnant woman you can hear the heart beat. But with an echo they are measuring flow and that is all I know about it. What my heart sounds like on an Echo is what my heart sounds like through a stethoscope. That's because of my murmur, when I was last in hospital the on call cardiologist let me hear my sister's heart beat through the stethoscope - boom boom, boom boom, boom boom... Mine? - whoosh whoosh, whoosh whoosh, whoosh whoosh. That was so weird for me because I had never heard my heart beat so I just assumed mine made the same boom boom Nicole's did and that the noise on the Echo was the flow of blood. Nope, that was my heartbeat. Although today it did not sound the same, it was raspy and very strange. I even said to the woman "oh, that doesn't sound good at all." She laughed and joked about having to do that again, I assumed she'd just had a bum angle. Then Dr Burns came in and had a wee nose at the machine which wasn't anything unusual, I was used to having doctors and medical staff looking at test results and machines and listening to my heart, I'm talking they would come over to introduce themselves, have a look and then I'd never see that person ever again. What I mean is they weren't on my case or helping they just wanted to see/hear Fallots. There's one strange thing about my heart condition, it's quite rare. A cardiologist is lucky to come across Fallots in his/her career and a GP would have to be very lucky. So I am used to and quite happy for people to come along have a listen/look and ask questions, it must be a treat when something like that comes across a doctors path and they could actually show students it, so yeah if it means that maybe one future doctor could better spot it in another patient twenty seconds out of my life and a cold stethoscope isn't a bother at all.
Don't get me wrong when I say "it must be a treat" I don't think I'm anything special I'm just relaying what doctors have said when they've been asking my permission to bring a few medical interns to me to ask questions and have a listen.
Anyway, Dr Burns and the echocardiographer were looking at the machine trying to find something and I thought "I hope nothings wrong". Something was. The doctor turned to me and said "You know what this mean, Taylor?" and I replied "A catheter?" only because I hadn't had a cardiac catheter in six years usually it's every two or three. She then gave a look that said "Oh shit, she really doesn't expect what I am about to say" What she exactly said next I couldn't tell you, it was all a bit of a blur. Turns out I need my "valve replaced", I say that because I don't understand what it is but apparently it's about a tube that goes from my chamber to my pulmonary artery or something. God knows.
To be very honest with you, at this point I couldn't care what it all means. I will want to know all this nearer the time right now I want to focus on getting my head around the idea of my chest being cut open and my heart being lifted out to be patched up. It's a very frightening thought, not a scary 'frightening' but a way in which I don't understand. Today I sat with my mum in Ikea having tea and talking about it and it dawned on me what the part of it all was that I was struggling with; I've had open heart surgery before, twice. Three times I have had major surgery and two of those has meant cutting open my chest. I was just a baby when all of this happened just like I was just a baby when I had my stroke. I don't remember any of it so I don't think of it as a change in my life because all I remember is having these scars and that history. Now I think I'm struggling with the idea of going through it all and remembering it, I know that I should be happy if I survive it but I am scared about it but again, it's not 'scared' it's an emotion I can't quite name yet.
Its 'pleh'.
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