Don't Hurt Yourself

If you were intrigued as to the nature of the 'non-specific angst' of a few days ago...

I've had a pain over my heart for the past couple of weeks or so. It wasn't constantly there, and it was a sort of awareness of something not quite right, rather than an outright pain - if you imagine a knuckle being pushed between two of your ribs - not too hard but enough that you'd know it was there. I am prone to getting 'stress balls' and it felt kind of similar to that - normally, I get them in my diaphragm. Not too much to worry about per se, but normally an indicator that I need to chill out and relax a bit. I haven’t been feeling out of breath since I’ve had this and hadn’t noticed my heart racing or anything, so I thought stress was almost certainly the cause. There’s not anything specific that I need to be stressed about, but I’ve a number of projects that are due about the same time; college work and a number of pilots I’ve been doing here at work, and I suppose it might be that that made me nervous.

Anyway, on Monday, I had a really lousy night's sleep - about three hours worth. I'd gone to bed thinking about this pain and ended up convincing myself that it wasn’t stress, it was an impending heart attack or lung cancer or something conceivably worse than that (whatever that might be), and the pain did seem greater. On the Tuesday, I actually told K___ I was a bit worried about this pain and I continued to fixate on it throughout the day. It was K___’s late night and I was in the house by myself all evening. I managed to work myself up into a right state worrying about it. I looked up ‘chest pains’ on the NHS Direct website and they scared the crap out of me. So, I then phoned NHS Direct and they categorically told me I needed to get to hospital and wanted to call an ambulance. I refused – K___ would have been on the way home, and I didn’t want to have to tell her something was up when she was on the train and couldn’t do anything about it. Besides, I’d had it for over two weeks by then, so didn’t think anything was likely to happen soon. However, I thought that it probably wasn’t a great idea and if I was in genuine danger of having a heart attack, hospital might be a good place to do it. I gave my folks a ring and my dad turned up and took me to hospital. I txt’d K___(she wouldn’t answer her phone) to say my mum would pick her up, and briefed my mum to get K___to the hospital as soon as possible.

Before my dad got to mine, I wrote a short message in Notepad on my computer. I would have written more, but then I was expecting them to say, 'Quite right, it's definitely stress, now calm down'. I didn’t really think that anything was going to happen, or at least I hoped it wouldn’t, but I hated the idea that I had missed my chance to tell everyone the things that you hope they know. That’s a good measure of how panicked I’d got myself, I think. I was seriously scared about what might happen.

So, at the hospital, they test my blood pressure and get me on an ECG machine (had my chest shaved for that, which was something you’d probably have to pay for anywhere else…). I saw the printout and wasn’t sure if it was good or not. All the peaks looked regular and the same height but there are four different lines of readouts on each page. On three, the spikes occurred at exactly the same time and were the same height. On one, it was completely flat for a period of three beats. Being the sort of person I am, I immediately wondered if that was normal, despite the fact that I obviously haven't the skill or knowledge to translate an ECG read out. Then they sent me out to wait until a doctor could see the results. In the interim, K___ arrived, looking a little bit teary and worried. Her phone had been flat and she’d been getting very upset when I didn’t pick her up at the station. Fortunately, my mum got there soon after. Unfortunately, I don't imagine that saying, 'your husband's gone to A&E with chest pains,' did much to make her feel any better.

Anyway, eventually, I see the doctor and he’s asking me to describe the pain, which I try to do as best I can. He’s not always happy with my responses and keeps asking me the same question over and over but not surprisingly, my answers remain the same. I don’t know if I wasn’t being specific enough or what. I described the ‘knuckle’ feeling, which is my best attempt to describe it. Eventually, he said he thought it was indigestion and prescribed Gaveston (or whatever it is). I thought and still think that’s crap, but am taking it anyway. He said my heart was perfectly all right. I asked about my blood pressure and he said it was a little high, but not particularly noteworthy - hell, I had to ask, so it clearly can't have been! So, I went home again. It was a relief to hear that my heart seems to be okay. I was a hole-in-the-heart baby, and so there was always a chance that it wasn’t 100%. That probably added to the stress.

The past couple of days, I’ve still managed to get myself stressed worrying about it when I've had particular twinges, but I eventually get it under control. I've not missed any work. I feel very tired in the evenings and I’m trying to relax as much as possible. K___'s been a godsend where this is concerned. I hate feeling like any sort of a burden. It’s difficult when the pain is located over your heart – naturally you tend to worry much more about that than some twinge in your calf muscle etc. Ultimately, the worrying just makes things worse not better, so practical steps are in order. I’m taking things easy and doing my best to get all my work etc prioritised and sorted. If nothing else, it seems to me that this is a wake-up call, a warning not to take my health for granted and I’m determined to take steps towards getting the weight down and eat more sensibly etc. I’ve no intention of going anywhere for quite some time.

I hate stress. I wish I wasn't prone to it, but clearly I am and therefore I need to take steps.

Don't hurt yourselves, people.

Thought for the Week

Our local paper has a 'Thought for the Week' column on the second page. I occasionally read it to enjoy the unbearably crass messages that appear there. This issue comes with a story about God and barbers. You may have heard it, but if not, here it is. I cribbed this version from the net, but it's pretty much what they had in the local rag.

A man went to a barber shop to have his hair cut and his beard trimmed. As the barber began to work, they began to have a good conversation. They talked about so many things and various subjects. When they eventually touched on the subject of God, the barber said: 'I don't believe that God exists.'

'Why do you say that?' asked the customer.

'Well, you just have to go out in the street to realize that God doesn't exist. Tell me, if God exists, would there be so many sick people? Would there be abandoned children? If God existed, there would be neither suffering nor pain. I can't imagine a loving God who would allow all of these things.'

The customer thought for a moment, but didn't respond because he didn't want to start an argument. The barber finished his job and the customer left the shop.

Just after he left the barbershop, he saw a man in the street with long, stringy, dirty hair and an untrimmed beard. He looked dirty and unkempt. The customer turned back and entered the barber shop again and he said to the barber, 'You know what? Barbers do not exist.'

'How can you say that?' asked the surprised barber. 'I am here, and I am a barber. And I just worked on you!'

'No!' the customer exclaimed. 'Barbers don't exist because if they did, there would be no people with dirty long hair and untrimmed beards, like that man outside.'

'Ah, but barbers DO exist! What happens, is people do not come to me.'

'Exactly!' affirmed the customer. 'That's the point! God, too, DOES exist! What happens, is, people don't go to Him and do not look for Him. That's why there's so much pain and suffering in the world.'

Fuck me. I'm convinced; I don't know about you... Oh no, hang on... I'm not.

Firstly, the above situation never ever happened. Even if we assume that the customer did manage to run into a knight of the road in the manner described, and even if we assume that the customer did manage to construct an inadequately thought about line of philosophical attack, things clearly couldn't work as depicted above. In reality, what would happen is that the customer would come back into shop and give his 'Barbers don't exist' line. Then, the barber would look at him like he was a bit lacking and eject the man from his shop before he caused a scene in front of the other customers.

Moreover, no decent writer would read that parable back and think to themselves, 'Yes, I think I've constructed a clever and convincing tale, with a logical consistency and strength of argument that cannot be denied.'

Instead, any reader is immediately irritated by the attempt to try and imply that the same burden of proof is required for an ordinary bloke who cuts your hair once every six weeks and who can provably be found where he claims to be and will actually demonstrate his claimed skills and an omnipotent, omnipresent and loving creator who allows George Bush to exist and only reveals himself to those who don't bother questioning badly constructed 'Thought for the Day' pieces.

I'm just glad I've not set foot in a barber's shop for over a decade. It seems their clientele are wankers.

Places wot I 'ave bin to.

I've visited the counties in yellow. Which counties have you visited? made by marnanel map reproduced from Ordnance Survey map data by permission of the Ordnance Survey. © Crown copyright 2001.

A silly thing, but it keeps you amused when non-specific angst keeps you awake at 2.15 am...

I think I've been to all of those places. I may be lying about a few, but not intentionally!