To Die Or Not To Die

Yes, I know! Look who popped the hell up out of the blue all of a sudden. Now pay attention, because we've a lot to cover and not much time in which to cover it.
No no, don't panic, that's nothing to do with the massively melodramatic title of this entry. I'll explain about that in the lower part of this ramble.

First of all - I was getting nowhere. I was 19st and a piddle. I'd go down on weeks when I biked, but only to, say, 19st 1, and then on weeks when I did nothing at all and ate like an emperor, I'd go up, but only, at most, to 19st 4. Simply couldn't crack my way back under the 19st barrier, which was really rather depressing.

Then a week last Thursday, d got out of work at a reasonable hour, and I went to collect her as usual. Feeling all happy and joyful and full of the essence of spring, we decided to check if there was a movie on that we'd enjoy seeing.
There wasn't, and so we made to leave.

I stopped. There was the catherine wheel in my chest.
There was the swimmy 'I could faint now if I decided to' head.
Annnnnd right on target, there was the heartbeat banging like a freight train.

I did all my usual things - lay on the floor, apologised to the manager, stuck my feet in the air (insert your own smutty comment here if you like - I probably did), sipped ice water, did pursed-lip breathing, yadda yadda yadda.

Nada. Nada. Nada. It wasn't going away. d, as far as I know, called my mother to take me up to the hospital. I'm fairly sure it was my mother who called the ambulance.
When they arrived, I decided to get up and - bang - felt the rapid, horrendous thumping dissipate back to what was normal.

The ambulance guys put some leads on me.
'It's OK,' I said, 'I'm back to normal now.'
One of them looked at me as if I'd said I was going to juggle bison shit.
'Yyyyyeah, you've got a resting heart rate of 160-odd. That's not normal on this planet,' he told me. 'Thing is - I can't leave you here with a rate like that.'
'Arse,' I said, as casually as I could.
'Yeah,' he agreed, and they got me into the ambulance. There, there were more leads, and a consistently high heart rate, but also, if such a thing doesn't fry your brain, a consistently irregular one.
'Bugger it,' said the paramedic. 'You're going for a ride, mate.'
I went for a ride. I didn't have a lot of choice - I was plugged into the ambulance. I'm not entirely sure, to be honest, I wasn't powering the thing - we all know the NHS is in crisis, and I wouldn't put it past the government to use patients as part of the 'dual-fuel' solution.

Anyhow, got there, more wires, more beeping, more heart mayhem. Was there for a couple of hours when a doctor came in, waving an ECG read-out.
I explained that I'd had these 'tachycardic' episodes for about five years, but that they always dissipated before they could be captured on any machine.
'Well, we've got it now,' he said, grinning and waving his ECG read-out.
'You really don't,' I told him. 'The episode itself was over before anyone got a lead on me. I feel perfectly normal now. What you have is a read-out of me feeling perfectly fine.'
His eyes flicked to the heart-rate monitor, which I couldn't see.
'Seriously?' he asked. 'You've got a resting heart rate of 189. If that's normal...' He blew out some air, thinking about it. I shrugged.

By the time the read-out was creeping into the mid 190s, the same doctor decided Something Had To Be Done. He was going to shift me to another room and inject a medication into me to slow my heart the fuck down. They wheeled me from the warm room I'd been all this time to a nice cool cubicle, stuck a stent in my hand, washed it through with sterilised water, hooked me back up to the monitors.
'Oh wow,' said d, looking at the number. 'Thought for a minute that was his heart rate, but I'm guessing it's his SAT, right?'
The doctor peered at it. The nurse peered at it. Then they peered at me.
'Nono, that's his heart rate,' said the doctor. 'Back in the 80s. Back in sinus rhythm. On its own.' He sounded rather hurt, as though I'd done it to spite him. 'Can't put the medication in now,' he jusssst slightly sulked.

Long story short, I was in hospital for about twenty hours, have had a diagnosis of not Tachycardia after all, but something called Paroxysmal Atrial Fibriliation. Have been put on a low-dose everyday beta blocker, which so far have come with occasional bouts of ridiculous exhaustion, mood swings and some of the weirdest paranoid dreams of my life. I've also been told to do 'nothing out of the ordinary' - like the gym - until I get seen in Cardiology clinic, so they can assess the effect of the drug and whether it's right for me.

But - and this is where the title comes in - was talking to a pal of mine, Joe, earlier today. She's someone else who struggles to Disappear for the sake of her health. Right now she's all about empowering videos of people who took nine months to go from massively, dangerously overweight to running marathons for charity. Really, that's what it comes down to - a decision: to die, or not to die. I can feel the rumbling stirrings of my Inner Stubborn Bastard. He's absolutely not back yet - I weighed in today having done nothing for a fortnight that even vaguely approached exercise and was 19st 2.5 - but he may be coming back. She said another thing that resonated: 'When you've had so many first days tht you start with optimism and real intent, it's hard not to think everyone thinks 'Oh look, another beginning...'

She's right about that - it's hard not to think that way yourself. But it's coming. Day 1, version god-only-knows. Coming soon.