Starbucks Is Trying To Kill Me!

No, really, it is.

It was Grand National Day yesterday - did you win? We did. Mind you, that's what comes of backing over half the field who finished - eight horses each, at a magnificent 25p each way, was always likely to get us someting. Not much, perhaps, but something. After a busy morning - which included a Venti Latte from the Caffeine Pimps in Stratford - we eagerly popped out to the betting shop, where we go one day a year and oddly enough they remember us (something about our blinking, doe-eyed cluelessness, maybe?), and collected profits of...wait for it...
62p!

I know! You wanna be our friends now, don't you?
Thing is, even at nearly five in the afternoon, it was still a glorious summer day, so we decided to take our new-found wealth on an adventure, and jumped on a bus. Inspired by the sunshine, we picked up a badminton set and a couple of solar-powered ornamental lights. Laden down, we figured we'd maybe pop into the Caffeine Pimps for one more, then pootle off home, as we had plans - I was going to do some writing, and d had a whole lot of kitchen fun in mind.

I pushed open the doors of Starbucks, and felt it happen. The expiring-firework fizz in my belly that kickstarts a tachycardic episode. This one felt bigger and more businesslike than the two tiny ones I've had this week (and hey, I milked one of those into a whole bitch-fest about Raymond Blanc!). I sat down immediately, tried to get my breath. Eyed the guy behind the counter, wondering if he'd mind if I laid across his pouffe and put my feet up in an elevated position, which normally curtails these episodes. Yes, his disapproving glance told me, he'd mind rather a lot. I got out of the shop, found d and headed to a bench. Tried to lay flat and get my feet above my head. It didn't seem to be working. I tried the purse-lipped breathing technique, staring up at the impossibly, beautifully blue sky. Still, my heart wouldn't calm down.
"What do you want to do honey?" asked d. "D'you want to go home, or to the hospital?"

Sigh.
It's at this point that I'm banned to rights of course for the hours and hours that followed.
"Three episodes in a week," I murmured. "Better let them check it out..."
So we got to a cab. Stratford in the sunshine was really rather busy, and on the way to the hospital, I started feeling the additional list of symptoms to this wretched thing - my chest tightened, feeling like I'd been punched a few hours ago and the bruise was coming up. Then it got harder to catch my breath. By now I was clammy, sweating streams, feeling buzzy in the head and slightly disconnected, trying to focus on the journey and the conversation with d and the cabbie, overplaying the joker.
Got there. Told the receptionist my history of tachycardia, told her about the three episodes, including the one that was going on right now.
"Take a seat," she said. I did better than that, I took three, and finally got my feet up on the arm of one of them. Within twenty seconds, my heart had calmed down.

Drama over. Except of course I was there now.
So there was an ECG, and blood pressure tests, and telling the story over to a nurse-practitioner who specialised in paediatrics and had a Betty Boop pin on her uniform. There was banter with a poor 65 year old woman who had blood pressure close to 200 but was still 'taking a seat', and there was genuine fear as a big black healthy-looking guy fell over for no identifiable reason and began twitching uncontrollably. Oh yeah - Casualty on a Saturday night, it's the stuff BBC dramas are made of, trust me.

The first blood test I had was at 7.50, and was done by someone who apparently couldn't recognise a vein in a line-up. She stuck in her needle, frowned, said "Noooo," and then moved the needle around, poking, apparently randomly, at my subcutaneous gubbins. "Nooo," she said again, pulling it out and trying a different spot on the same arm. "Ohhh," she said. "Nooo..."
I offered up the other arm, in case its veins were altogether less skilled in the subtle art of camouflage. They were, and she finally bled me. The nurse practitioner then promptly squished my dreams of getting out of there and going home for dinner by saying "OK, we'll need to do one two hours later, to check for cardiac enzyme markers. I mean, I think you're fine, but if I send you home and you're not fine and something dreadful happens...Still, should be out of here by midnight..."
9.50 came and so, impressively promptly, did the second blood test. "Right," said the nurse who took it. "One more now at 11.50, and that should be the lot..."
"What?" we said. "We were hoping to be out of here by midnight."
"Nooo," he said. It seemed to be the word of the night. "You'll be transferred to the ward..."
"Oh blimey," I murmured. Getting out of there at all last night seemed increasingly unlikely.
And so we went to the ward. And bimbled. For hours. In the meantime, Mr Fally-Down Guy had been moved up there, to the bed next to me. In the far corner was an old guy who, bless him, kept trying to get up to pee, and being told he couldn't, and not understanding, and my (recovered now, honest, let me the Hell out!) heart went out to him. While d and I were there, in the dark, trying to whisper to each other and not fall asleep in case they forgot about us, Darth Vader was wheeled in opposite - a poor guy in a breathing mask, oxygen pumping. For the second time, and with no remorse, I became the healthiest sick person on the ward.

Finally, at about 2AM, we saw our first doctor. "You're fine," he said, seeming a little perpexed, "go home." So we did, by about 2.40.

You're wondering about the Starbucks thing, aren't you? Wellllll...the thing is this. Back in October last year, when I had the first major tachycardic episode, I'd been becoming addicted to a delicious canned Starbucks offering called a Double Shot. It was not only highly caffeinated, but really quite sweet. When I told this to the doctors, they said "Ohhhh, cut those out..." - so I did, inasmuch as the Double Shots were concerned. And I haven't really drunk a lot of coffee since - the occasional post-meal cappucino, sure, but nothing much. Then two weeks ago, d took me to a Starbucks, and I conquered a lifetime of British reserve by finally figuring out how to order something that wouldn't make them stare at me like a weirdo.
Ding! - Lightbulb moment.
Since then, I've been having Starbucks coffee at a rate of about one every two days, and sometimes more. I mentioned this to the nurses this time around too. "Seriously," Betty Boop told me, "cut out the caffeine!"
Sigh...so I guess, when all's said and done, Starbucks isn't trying to kill me. It's doing it, but it's not trying to do it. That's all me. No more coffee for me...

So there it is.
I'm feeling really rather eight-year-old and foot-stampy and pathetic about this, because it feels like my list of oral pleasures is being cut methodically down to nothing. It isn't, of course - I'd need to develop lactic and wheat intolerances to be left pleasure-free. But I'm just having a childish moment, and folding my arms and sticking out my tongue and going "Nehhh..."

So...nehhh...

Of course, I know what you're thinking. I know because d's been telling it to me for a day now. What about the de-caf option...right?

Thing is, there are things that have always been beyond the pale to me. Wearing crocs or sandals, for instance. Do it yourself by all means, it's just not something that I feel able to do. Playing golf or going skiing are a couple more. Using a 'man-bag' or having a pony-tail...and so on.

And then there's going de-caf. It's just, probably, that I've bought in to macho stereotyping, but if you're gonna order coffee that has no caffeine and no sugar, there's something in my fundamental nature that asks..."What's the point?"

"The taste, maybe?" suggested d.

Smartarse...