Really intense and I'm happy you are here to share your knowledge.
There's so many people that could be helped just by reading your experiences in this thread.
I'm unschooled in some medical procedures. You said that they had to do unclotting.
Is this while you are awake and aware?
Or is it only done by surgery?
Edit: SwiftKey testing my patience again.
Warning: this may be long and boring!
12 June 2018, just after midnight, I get this strange feeling in my chest. It's familiar, but different. Feels like the start of indigestion. It's uncomfortable, and I'm trying to fall asleep, so I swig some Gaviscon. The feeling doesn't go away. The discomfort becomes this burning feeling. It slowly ramps up over the course of an hour. It's literally the worst heartburn I've ever had at this stage. I drink more Gaviscon. I then start feeling this pressure on my chest. Like someone is standing on it. I think the most accurate way to describe it would be like one of those clips you see on the internet of someone putting rubber bands around a water melon. The more time passes, the more rubber bands are added, and the pressure ramps up. It feels like my chest cavity is being crushed from the inside. The pain has spread to my jawbone. It's this deep ache. I don't know what to do, my wife is still asleep next to me, so I drink more Gaviscon, and take some ibuprofen. About 2 hours have passed since it started, and the sleeping pill I took before bed finally kicks in.
12 June 2018, around 05:00, I am woken up by the same pain, now with all the symptoms at their maximum at once. More Gaviscon, more ibuprofen. I need to get up for work soon, so I go through my usual morning routine. By the time I leave, the pain is mostly gone, and the pressure has subsided for the most part. Later that day, I'm talking to my manager in the office, and I suddenly feel really out of it. It's past my knock-off time anyway, so I begin the 1.5 hour commute home. Before I pull into the final stop, a little voice in my head tells me "go to the A&E, just to make sure". I walk out the station, cross the road, and walk into the A&E at about 18:30. Seems quite busy. I begin to have second thoughts, but stick it out. My turn eventually comes, I explain the symptoms I had earlier, and that I don't feel so hot. I get told to take a seat in the triage area. Despite how busy it is, my name is called next. I get a lot of dirty looks! The triage nurse takes my BP, asks me really strange questions about family history of heart disease, etc. I then get taken to another waiting area. Again, it's packed, and again, my name is called first. The insert a cannula, take blood, and hook me up to an ECG. They get a reading, and tell me to wait outside again. Not long after, I get called back in to discuss the test results. They don't say anything about my blood, but say that they're going to take more in about an hour because the ECG is inconclusive (I found out later that the blood test is for troponin - the protein your heart muscle release into your blood stream when it's dying, i.e. having a heart attack. Mine was through the roof, but they were still thrown off because the ECG only has a 12-hour window, and it had already been over 13hrs since the last cardiac event). They take more blood, and inject something cold into my arm (I would find out later this was the "clotbuster": it thins blood, stops it from clotting and tries to dissolve any clots currently in your bloodstream). They tell me they need to keep me overnight for observation - I'm pissed off, because no-one has told me what's going with me yet, I'm tired, hungry and I just want to go home. I listen to my wife, and get taken to ACU.
13 June 2018, around 05:00, I get woken up by the pain again. I'm
deur die kak, so to speak, and don't press the red button like the nurses told me to. 07:00, the nurses come round for the wake up call to give me more medicine (they already injected me in the abdomen with more clotbusters - which really ****ing hurt! - at around 03:00). They rip me a new one for not pressing the button (remember, at this stage they know what's happening to me - I still don't)! Later that morning, someone comes round to do an ultrasound (they're checking all the valves and chambers are still working properly). I get told I'm being moved to the specialist cardiac ward. I stay there overnight, and see a few mates I'd made in the ACU ward.
14 June 2018, I go for a dump with all the tubes and cables from the monitors still attached to me. I now have a drip attached, too. I guess it's the slight pressing that triggers something. I finish up, and head back to my bed. The pain is in full swing again. This time, I press the button. Three nurses rush over. One of them sprays something under my tongue. In about 5 mins, the pain is gone. Completely. Amazed, I ask what the hell kind of black magic that was?! Glyceryl trinitrate - it expands all your blood vessels at once. The nurses disappear, and a few minutes later, a cardiologist appears. "So, you've had 4 heart attacks. We've decided to skip the MRI, and go straight for the gold standard: an angioplasty". This is the first time since this all started on 12 June that I've been told what's wrong with me. About 30mins later, 2 paramedics arrive with a gurney, and tell me to hop on. I'm whisked away in an ambulance to cardiology at St George's hospital. It's a university hospital so I'm a bit nervous when I see all the students in the theatre. A doctor explains the procedure to me: they'll insert a tube into my wrist or groin (I chose wrist). They'll then pump ink into my arteries because they don't appear under X-Ray. They'll then feed a cable with a small balloon on the end all the way into my heart. Around it is a mesh scaffolding (a stent) that will press the obstruction flat against the artery wall when they inflate the balloon. This takes care of the blockage, and allows normal bloodflow to the heart to resume. There's just one catch, and I have to sign an indemnity form: there's about a 1% chance the procedure could kill me. I joke, and say "if I don't do this, I'll die anyway, right? Hand it over..."
The procedure is surreal, because you're awake the entire time. They make an incision in my wrist, and start feeding the tube into my arm. There's two screens showing the live X-Ray. I can see my heart beating on the screen. They zoom in a bit. They inject the ink, and with every beat, I can see it moving through the arteries in my heart. They then feed in the cable with the balloon and stent into my wrist, and carefully feed it all the way into my heart. About 45mins to 1hr later, they clamp up my wrist, and while I'm lying there, they explain everything to me: the left coronary artery (the big boy that feeds the heart) was 99% blocked. The stent was able to open it up almost completely again. They show me the before and after photos, and I'm shocked at the difference. I get taken away, stay in the recovery ward overnight, and get discharged the next morning with a lot of advice on how I'm going to have to live my new life (along with a lot of medication that I'll need to take for the rest of that life).
