LIFE — well, it’s all a bit touch and go really…4th and Final Part
After a few weeks a guy from the Cardiac Rehabilitation department of the local hospital rang to invite me in for a chat and I ended up joining his Rehab group which was twice a week in the gym for 8 weeks. These people are brilliant, they go as far as they can to help you and are there to offer advice and answer some of the huge number of questions you now find the need to ask. They took my blood pressure before and after every session, and monitored my heart rate all through and very soon I began to regain my strength.
The classes began with warm-up exercises and then it was circuit training and to be honest I was surprised at how hard it was. I hadn’t done anything like this since school, and I am of course much older now, and recovering from a heart attack. But they assured me it was all OK and if I felt bad, just stop.
Some of the exercises involved weights, some were running (yes, running) across the gym and back bouncing a basketball, and others were stretching and sitting and standing and all that sort of stuff and soon I was quite good at it. One of the exercises was stepping up on to a bench and down again. There were 2 benches, a low one and a high one. At the beginning I could do around 20 steps on the low one, after a few weeks I graduated to the high one and by week 6 I could do 50 steps on the high one. This was incredible progress.
A big thing in our house has always been the Christmas Quality Street. Not a silly little packet, but the huge circular tins they sell in supermarkets for a fiver. At first the tins arrived in the lounge in December, and then I bought them in November and in recent years it wasn’t unheard of for a tin or two to appear in October. I could easily sit and eat through best part of a tin in a night or two, leaving only the circular gold ones and the long thin ones that I didn’t like. And then on the third night I’d eat the circular gold ones and the long thin ones. And then open another tin.
After the first level Rehab I moved to the second level which is once a week for 8 weeks and is basically an extension of level one, but just a bit harder with no breaks in between exercises, but I can do it. And having been so successful with level one I was also invited to join level 3 of the Rehab schedule and this is where it really happens.
This is on a Monday night and the course has no end, you can carry on for ever. You basically walk round the huge sports hall for a while and then someone yells, jog. This is a shock but you attempt it, and then jog with your knees up high and then you jog sideways and from then on it gets mad as they devise even more uncomfortable ways to get round the hall. Later you end up standing against the side wall of the gym with someone shouting sprint to the white line and back. You do this, and then it’s the second white line and then the third, but on this one you have to sprint back, backwards. It’s not easy and it’s going to take me a while to get up with the programme but some of the other guys tell me they couldn’t do anything at first, but after a while they’ve got better at it and that this will happen to me.
I must say that this Cardiac Rehab is wonderful and the people from my local hospital who run it are dedicated and kind, but I think I’m lucky with this. I have heard from a number of other people who underwent Cardiac Rehab in other areas who didn’t have anything like the same successful experience. I think all hospitals have a Cardiac Rehab department, but the levels of dedication and professionalism differ greatly from one area to another, and you have to be lucky and hope that your local hospital is one of the good ones.
It is not just cake, it’s biscuits too. An evening exploratory stroll into the kitchen in search of a snack could sometimes reveal a packet of biscuits in the cupboard, which was just superb. I’m not talking rich tea, or boring biscuits like that, I mean at least fruit shortcake, or chocolate chip, or preferably a whole tin of mixed biscuits, some with chocolate covering. It’s not hard to down a packet, or a tin, at one sitting.
The other guys at rehab can be very amusing, and also prophetic. All of them have had serious heart issues, some heart attacks, some bypasses, and they are such a nice group; very helpful and encouraging and kind. We’re all in the same situation, one of them once said ‘we’ve all been to the edge and we’ve looked over, but not this time’. How true that is.
And then after the running there is the exercises which is still circuit training but this is a completely different level. There are 28 different exercises, some done on mats on the floor, some with weights, some exercising while balancing on squishy plastic balls, and there is no gap, you go straight from one to the next. This takes you to an hour and a half of full-on exercise and then you have the choice of badminton or football.
I hadn’t kicked a ball other than playing with the kids in the garden for probably 40 years. In my red pull-on top I received the ball and looked up to see the goal invitingly in the distance, in my mind I could see the net ripple as my shot rocketed into the top corner. In reality I scuffed it badly and watched it roll slowly along the floor with hardly enough power to even reach the goal.
After 3 minutes I got into an unwise tackle with a huge guy and ended up in a crumpled heap on the floor, my head spinning and my knee killing me. I stood up too quickly and immediately fell down again to be helped up and then guided to a chair accompanied by a round of applause from everyone, about 30 of them. This was incredibly supportive and made me realise that this comradeship, this mutual combining of interests, this genuine support for others in the group is so unique.
Now, an evening snack is a pear or a peach, and strangely I have no desire to eat cake or biscuits and of course butter and any other fats are definitely not on the menu. I have lost 4 stone to date and I’m currently 15 stone so still quite fat, but it’s going the right way. I’ve reduced my waist size from 42 to 36, and my local British Heart Foundation charity shop has received 15 pairs of jeans from me so far in sizes 42, 40 and 38, I’ll never need them again. I can’t tell you how much pleasure it gave me to do this.
My doctor has been incredibly encouraging and kind. He has calculated all the BMI stuff and he reckons I need to lose another stone and a half to reach 13 ½ stone which should be about the right weight for me allowing for my height and age, and I’ll do it, no question. The first few months since the heart attack saw a huge weight loss, but now I’ve plateaued and even though I eat no bad things, and often substitute fruit only for a meal, I’m struggling to lose much more than a pound a week, if that, and so it has to be done with exercise and diet combined and I’m quite ready for that.
I keep being warned not to go back on the sugar and fats, but why would I? It is only going to kill me.
Last weekend a group from Rehab went to Leeds to play in a 5 a side football tournament — — ‘we got beat 9–6 in the final by the testicular cancer boys. Fuck me they’re young and fit, some of them are only 40'.
Both my doctor and the guys from Cardiac Rehab have explained to me how people react to a heart attack in different ways. Some men think a heart attack means their life is over and they will never be the same again. Some are prone to depression after a heart attack and this depth of misery impacts on their lives making recovery difficult, if not impossible.
Others, however, look on it as an opportunity for a new life, thinking how lucky they are to still be here, survival was an incredible event and looking to grab this new life with both hands and take only positives from the situation.
I am in the second camp, I look on it as an opportunity for a new start, and with the help of a new dietary regime and the increasing strength given to me by the Cardiac Rehab programme, I look forward to every day, feeling well and embracing my new life. My birthday this year is no longer a birthday, it’s a thank fuck I’m still here day, and I admit I revel in it.
As I write this it is the 4th September and 8 months ago today I was unsure if I was going to live or die, and when I think back to that day it makes me blub I admit, as I am now, but it is a happy blub.
I described myself to someone last week as a walking advert for a heart attack which sounds silly I know. Nobody wants a heart attack, and as described above it’s the most frightening thing that has ever happened to me, but in a lot of ways it has been revelatory.
My doctor’s comment that what has happened to me is life changing, couldn’t be more true. I am slimmer and fitter than I can remember and I feel stronger and healthier and more able to do physical stuff than I have for many years.
I am enjoying my new diet, it’s different and interesting — how many different types of fish are there to try — and there’s always new fruit to discover.
I love going to Cardiac Rehab at the gym and I’ve now joined a new Friday group which is an hour of aerobics and I love it . I have met a load of great new people, some of the guys are in their 60’s and 70’s and have flat, muscular stomachs and they take great pleasure on working on their fitness and it’s beginning to rub off on me. I get incredible pleasure from being able to do more each week, feeling better and more capable of doing the exercises as the week’s progress.
I have been struggling with the jogging, it’s very hard for me, but this week I managed to do over half of it which is an unbelievable improvement on previous weeks, and one of the Cardiac Rehab guys was there and he noticed I’d done well and congratulated me on it. Although I’m not as good as some of the others it doesn’t matter, what matters is improving, and I’m certainly doing that.
My next step will be 34 waist jeans and it won’t be long, and then after that who knows? I haven’t tried football again since my disaster in the first week so there’s that to look forward to, and I’m now swimming regularly and that should help me lose the extra weight and get me even fitter.
I’ve come a long way from that dreadful night at Barts as I was wheeled from the ambulance in the rain. It could all have gone so wrong but in fact it’s gone so right, so maybe it is true, maybe I am a walking advert for a heart attack.
Ends
