In the weeks before the operation in February 2017, I was very cheerful. I had finally begun to accept that things at work would need to change, and with many people reassuring me that I still had an important role to play, I started to believe it. In January and February, Geraldine and I had booked a couple of last-minute breaks to Kidderminster and Shrewsbury to stay in posh hotels and visit the surrounding countryside. These were in addition to the business trip that we took to Oxfordshire, so we had a very pleasant start to the year.
We continued to make plans such as these through to March, living as if nothing was about to happen, although I was always aware that I could be called in for the operation at any time, possibly at short notice. We’d only been back from Shrewsbury for 24 hours and I’d just had my final visit to the counsellor when I took a call informing me that the date for my operation was set for one week hence on Monday 20th February. Suddenly, everything got real again, and my emotions began to intensify. I have no memory of that final week at work, other than that I went in every day, two afternoons at Samlesbury and three mornings at Warton. I suppose I must have considered that this was better than sitting at home where I would be less distracted and more prone to worry.
On the Saturday before I was admitted on the Sunday, Sharon had called round for a coffee at 9am and stayed until noon. We’ve never spoken about it since, but I’m sure that she planned this just to help take my mind off things. She’s very perceptive and thoughtful about things like that. I’d been working to replace the gate and fence at the side of the house and in trying to keep things normal, I was careful to finish off that job in the afternoon before mowing the paths through the field for the first time that year. Geraldine and I spent the evening with Adrian and Hasna who’d invited us for a meal, and we stayed chatting until well after midnight. I remember that as the evening progressed my mind began to drift and the conversation around me started to feel a bit dreamlike as though I was watching events on a TV. I must have been interacting as normal, but inside my head, I was certainly somewhere else. Whether anyone noticed, I don’t know, but it was certainly a very surreal evening. I don’t remember going to sleep that night, so it must have been fairly normal; I certainly didn’t lie awake, worrying.
Emily drove me to Blackpool Victoria hospital the next day, Sunday 19th February, arriving soon after 2pm but we had to wait over two hours until a bed became available on the ward. I hated this period. I just wanted things to be over with, and this delay prolonged the goodbye much more than I wanted. After they’d left me, I tried to imagine the conversation between Geraldine and Emily in the car on the journey home and these thoughts made me more melancholic than anything else had done. I was feeling fine in myself; I was being well cared for and was fully aware of everything that was happening, but I knew that they could only imagine what I was going through, and it probably wasn’t nearly as distressing as they perhaps thought.
It was actually pretty boring, routine stuff until 2:30pm the following day when I was wheeled down to the operating theatre. Being anaesthetised was nothing like as dramatic as I’d imagined, having watched many TV dramas covering the subject. I recall chatting to the anaesthetist (or maybe it was a nurse) and waiting to be told to count down from ten, but that never happened. One minute I was fully awake, and then nothing! It wasn’t like gradually going to sleep, and there certainly wasn’t a tunnel of light gradually receding. Suddenly, I was unconscious, just like flicking a switch.
The next thing I remember was someone shouting my name and telling me to wake up. When I did, I remember answering a few questions and very gradually realising that it was all over, and the operation was behind me. I heard the anaesthetist say, “He’s OK, he can breathe on his own now, can’t you Bernard?” I must have said yes, although I wasn’t aware of doing such a thing. Then someone grabbed hold of a tube that had been down my throat and pulled it out with a horrible slurping noise. It wasn’t a nice feeling or sound, but I was only aware what had actually happened once it was over. Gradually, I became conscious of a huge pad over my chest although I could feel nothing from the inside. I could feel the padding with my hands, but it was like feeling an inanimate object. It certainly didn’t feel like it was attached to me. The time was 11pm on Monday night, 20th February. Apparently, the double bypass operation was completed by 5:30pm, but I don’t know why I was still anaesthetised for another five hours. Perhaps they were just pressure-testing me and checking for leaks? I was told that the surgeon had been able to replace the blocked tubes with others in the area (don’t ask me what I was doing with pipes in my chest that I didn’t really need) so thankfully, I didn’t require a vein to be removed from my inner thigh. I had been warned that this was a strong possibility, and in those cases the subsequent pain in the leg is far greater than in the chest.
I was then told to go to sleep, which I must have done, although I have no recollection of it, and I was woken again at 6:30 the next morning and I was made to sit up in bed. This hurt like hell, since using my arms for leverage was excruciating because of the damage inflicted on the muscles in my chest. I had two chest drains fitted just below my rib cage which I could feel prodding me inside my body. This was horrible and although not painful as such, it was just uncomfortable and felt very alien. At 11:30am, they made me get out of bed and sit upright in a chair. This action felt so odd, but apparently it was necessary for some reason. Once I was in position, I felt fine, and was able to have visitors at 2:30pm. Sadly, I can’t remember who came, but I imagine it was Geraldine and Emily. At 5:30pm I was transferred out of CITU (Cardiac Intensive Therapy Unit) back to ward 38 which I’d left just 27 hours earlier.
The next two days are rather hazy, since nothing new happened. I was in the standard routine of being on a hospital ward, with events such as food, medication, visitors and medical staff visits taking place at frequent intervals throughout the day. The two chest drains were still inserted, and the pipes were draining into a bag stored on a trolley by my bed. I had to drag the trolley with me whenever I went to the loo. Every few hours a doctor would come by and inspect the fluid level in the bag. Somehow he knew what volume of fluid was remaining in my chest, and until it was out, the drains had to remain. I was unaware of them for most of the time; they were only really uncomfortable when I changed positions, but whenever I moved from lying to sitting or from sitting to standing, I really knew about it. It was a cause of great relief when on Thursday afternoon the doctor was happy with the volume of fluid collected in the bag and the tubes could come out. I remember when the first one was extracted it was startlingly unpleasant, and then the wound had to be stitched up. During this time, I’m thinking “There’s two of these! However much pain this causes, I’m going to have to go through it all again in a few minutes”.
On Thursday evening I was told that things were looking good and with a fair wind I should be discharged on Friday. There were still two more hurdles I had to leap, though. I couldn’t be discharged until I had walked unaided up and down the corridor and secondly, I had to pass a stool. No problem, you may think, but I hadn’t been to the loo for that purpose for over three days, and I certainly needed to go, but things were a bit bunged up in there. I did try to go a couple of times on the Friday morning, but with no success, and I was beginning to become a bit stressed. If I wasn’t discharged on Friday, I would have to wait over the weekend before I could leave, and no-one wanted that, especially me.
All the occupants of ward 38 were recovering from open heart surgery and were all at slightly different stages of recovery. The chap in the next bed to me had had his operation before me, and he was struggling to ‘perform’ toilet-wise and so when he eventually managed it on the Friday morning he was so delighted that he came out of the toilet looking elated and he began shouting for the nurse. He stopped another bloke from going into the toilet he had just vacated because he hadn’t flushed the loo since he wanted to show the nurse the evidence! When she eventually turned up, he looked rather disappointed to be believed without question, and she simply asked him to flush away his prize exhibit.
I managed to follow suit later that day and informed the nurse of my success and after that, the walk up and down the corridor was a doddle. I was using a walking frame and a nurse was stood by my elbow all the time telling me not to rush and asking about my health the whole way. I felt fine and managed the distance with no effort or any pain, thus clearing the way for my discharge.
Laurence volunteered to drive me home and he and Geraldine arrived at the hospital at tea time on Friday 24th February 2017. After a slight delay collecting my tablets from the pharmacy (I was taking seven different pills each day), we set off at 6:15 for the (very careful) drive home.
At this point, I took time to wonder just what was going through the minds of my wife and children. The hospital offered a glimpse into this in a booklet I was given upon discharge. A quote from the booklet read, “Although you have to suffer the physical pain and all that major surgery entails, it is important not to forget how those at home have suffered, but in a different way.” My family must have been worried sick all this week wondering what was going on. It must have been very upsetting seeing me all linked up to beeping machines and tubes and possibly appearing pale and tired. Of course, I was always delighted to see them and visits cheered me enormously, but I never had to drive away afterwards wondering if things were as good as I had tried to make out. I was genuinely happy to have the operation behind me, and I had everything to live for now, but my visitors might have considered that I was just putting on an act for them although I really wasn’t. The whole experience was nothing like as terrifying as I had anticipated, and the pain relief was such that I felt little or no discomfort for much of the time. I just wanted to get out of hospital and begin getting my life back, by going back to work and getting out cycling and gardening once more.
I have very little memory of the following weekend. I suppose that I sat in a chair or lied in bed reading. I know that as part of my rehabilitation I had to walk each day gradually increasing the distance. On the Saturday, I walked 175 paces round the pond in the garden. (My ongoing obsession with statistics caused me to record every walk I took following the operation). And I also walked up and down stairs four times in the day. On the Sunday I went on two walks in the garden (238 and 340 paces each) increasing the speed to 2.3 mph. By Monday, I had walked almost half a mile in a little under 12 minutes and was ready for my first outing.
Geraldine drove me to Waitrose in Walton-le-Dale on the final day of February where we had a coffee and a cake. I felt very nervous being out once more. Nothing had changed, but somehow, everything had. I was still wearing a huge pad strapped to my chest over the wounds and I was conscious that any movement might cause pain or worse. I knew that my sternum was clipped together with inch-long staples, so that wasn’t suddenly going to burst apart, and the flesh was stitched with dozens of dissolvable stitches so I should have felt safe, but I didn’t. Every action was carefully considered so as not to cause any unnecessary movement, and my pace was very slow to ensure I put no strain on my heart or the tubes connected to it. In the afternoon, I visited the chemist and took my longest walk since the operation (nearly half a mile) and began feeling a little more confident.
The comedian and TV presenter Bob Mortimer was born just seven weeks after me and, in his autobiography, “And away…” I felt that the paragraphs he wrote describing his experiences following similar heart surgery perfectly expressed what I felt at the time.
Extract from “And away…” The autobiography of Bob Mortimer (2021)
“I spent the rest of the week walking the ward every hour on the hour. I was very slow, shuffling rather than walking. It wasn’t that I didn’t have the energy or was in too much pain. It was simply the psychological barrier of putting too much strain on your heart. In my head I would imagine the stitches in my arteries bulging and leaking, just waiting to burst open and destroy me. Despite Dr Young’s and the nurses’ reassurances, I just couldn’t convince myself that stitches could properly secure any pipe that has liquid flowing through it. I mean, when you make a stitch, you make a hole; when you make hundreds of stitches, you make hundreds of holes.
On Monday morning, one week after my admission, I declared to the lovely Irish nurse supervising my stay that I felt ready to leave. I had had a small shit and had survived a low-flow lukewarm shower. It was time for me to take the corridor and stairs test. I walked briskly this time, hoping to impress. She asked me how I was feeling emotionally and I told her that I felt ‘different’ – slightly euphoric, which was very unusual for me. She told me that every heart patient feels like a slightly different person after the operation.”
The following day was Ash Wednesday and I had a visit from my parish priest who came round to offer me a blessing and to give me Holy Communion. Afterwards we had a lovely chat and he casually mentioned that the particular blessing he offered was called ‘The sacrament of anointing of the sick’ which was OK, and he then said (unnecessarily, in my view) that it was exactly the same as receiving the Last Rites! He clarified that it is a ritual of healing appropriate not only for those in immediate danger of death but also for those suffering from physical, mental, or spiritual sickness. Well, whatever it was, it worked because I’m still here several years later. It just seems strange that I can claim to have received the Last Rites. I don’t often mention it in polite discussion, though; I have an inkling that it might be a conversation-stopper.
The stitches from the chest drains were the heavy-duty sort that needed a pair of bolt cutters to remove them so I had an appointment at a clinic in Buckshaw Village on Thursday to do this. Once these were out, it felt to me like I was really on the way to recovery. Having previously written my autobiography whilst recovering from the initial heart attack, I had to find a new sedentary occupation to fill my days. I could go for walks (well, this was mandated) but these only lasted around 20 minutes each day and so I still had a lot of time to fill. It was then that I decided to scan all my old paper photographs and slides into digital format. I had several years’ worth to tackle so it kept me occupied throughout March.
Every day I felt better than the day before and so, on Saturday 4th March I halved my painkiller dose. By Sunday morning I realised that this was a considerable error and by lunchtime, I was back up to full strength! Within three weeks though I had stopped using any paracetamol and was feeling fine. By the end of March I was walking between three and four miles per day at quite a brisk pace and feeling no ill-effects.
In the first half of the month I also enjoyed many visitors who thankfully spaced out their visits so that I was kept entertained on most days. I also had plenty of time to think about life beyond surgery. The counselling sessions had helped me to focus on what I deemed to be important and I began to imagine a change in my life. One idea I had was that I would take up serious photography once more. I had sold my old film camera (a Pentax ME Super SLR) ten years previously and so I began looking at buying a good quality digital camera. I spent time studying the market and decided to buy a camera that was the size of a compact but had the complexity and versatility of an SLR. On 10th March I took delivery of an Olympus OM D-EM10 which was a mirrorless compact camera with two interchangeable lenses. Sadly, in only a matter of months I realised that this was a mistake; the camera was hugely complicated and there was the constant temptation to switch to automatic mode which offered photographs of barely better quality than my existing compact camera. The camera didn’t come with a built-in case and so it felt very delicate when out ‘in the field’ and since I’d also purchased a long focal length zoom lens for more flexibility, I carried this everywhere but I very rarely used it.
Around the same time, mobile phone cameras, which were a novelty ten years previously, were becoming seriously good for most circumstances and I found if I took two photographs side by side with the camera and the phone, I actually preferred the phone version. Since I always had my phone with me (and it was pocket-sized) I found that I was using the camera less and less, and never to its full capability so eventually sold it ‘as new’ six years later. I lost a few pounds on the transaction, but since the camera was sitting in a cupboard at home never being used, it made perfect sense to cut my losses. By the end of March, I still wasn’t driving or cycling, but I was feeling back to normal health-wise. I received another sick note to take me up to 27th April, which seemed an age off but I had moved to a much better place in my mind so I just rolled with it. I was musing with the idea of retirement and gradually getting my mind accustomed to the thought. Looking back, it was a very slow process and one that I had shied away from considering until my health scare brought it into greater focus.