Today’s Podcast Episode is going to be rather different; it’s going to be a fictional story. It’s a story of someone that had a heart attack although it’s founded in a true story. It’s the first story that I have found that is fictional about having a cardiac event so it is rather novel (excuse the pun, or not 😊) and I’d like to share it with you. 

So now without any further ado, I will hand you over to Tony and the Egregious (uh·gree·juhs) Fortune.

I came across the author, Aaron David in a Facebook group when I was looking for people to proof read and give me feedback on my book ‘The Beat Goes on’, a guide of how to support yourself emotionally and practically once you were discharged from hospital.

Aaron agreed, he then told me he was a published author – this nearly gave me my second heart attack as I was then nervous about what he might say. He was amazing and really helped get it just right. In the meantime, I thought I would check out his work and found that he was an author of numerous books of short humorous fiction stories and poems.

This was when I read his book of short stories “Booky McBookface” and came across this story that I would like to share with you today. It reminded me of how we never know what is just around the corner, to be careful what you wish for and how quickly things can change.

Stories can be more than just fictional stories they can be metaphors for life. I use them a lot in my hypnotherapy scripts they allow clients to apply their own meaning and make the changes they desire.

It’s not me or Aaron that is going to reading the story but another hearty, Tony Richens-Smith. Tony is also a published author.

After his widow maker during covid he wrote his second book “My B****** Heart”, his personal journey after his heart attack. It was when I was listening to his audio book version, I thought I’d ask him to record this for me.

Click to find out more about Aaron David on his Website and his Amazon Authors Page for his books. You can catch up with Tony Richens-Smith at his Website and his Amazon Authors Page for his books. 

We’ve had the year from hell. Last February our eldest son’s appendix burst, bad enough in itself but when he went to see a GP, he was told he had gastroenteritis and to go home and take painkillers. He did as he was told for five days until he was doubled up in agony and shivering violently; I took him to A&E.

After various tests and scans, they realised how grave the situation was and he had emergency surgery at 10.30pm. The surgeon came to speak to my wife and me at around 12.30am. He told us the appendix had burst, spraying half a litre of pus across his guts and it stayed there festering for five days.

At twenty-one years old our son could have died. Thankfully he made a full recovery although the surgeon’s stapling skills were at best, rather shabby. He had to have his dressings changed daily by a nurse for ten weeks after he left hospital.

In April my ninety-six-year-old father died. It wasn’t a surprise; he’d been very frail for a while, but it was still very upsetting. Then there was the funeral to organise and sorting out his affairs. His funeral was covered by some savings in a deposit account but he had some outstanding debts. I hoped his life insurance would cover this but once he’d died, I discovered he’d cashed that in eight years ago. Where did the money go? I haven’t a clue but I didn’t see a penny of it. He left me in a financial pickle but we got through it somehow.

For the rest of the year, we were in one hospital or another every day with my beloved father-in-law, an hour and a half in the afternoon, an hour and a half in the evening. Being self-employed, I was able to be available, squeezing in bits of work between visits. He was very poorly with four cancers; lung, spine, prostate and brain. They were all ‘manageable’ so not life threatening but there was a complication; he kept getting pressure on his brain. The doctors didn’t have a clue, saying it was encephalitis one minute and hydrocephalus the next. They were talking about putting a shunt in (literally a plastic drainpipe in the brain, guiding excess fluid to his stomach) but Christmas suddenly appeared. On Christmas Eve he caught pneumonia (yes, in hospital) and they had to put a feeding tube through his nose and down his throat. Being Christmas, all of the more able staff were off so six people tried to insert this tube. They eventually gave up and he went without food and with pneumonia for ten days; he was given fluid intravenously.

Once Christmas was over and regular staff returned, they managed to get the tube in, the day after that they discovered he’d beaten the pneumonia. Things were finally beginning to look up. We met the doctor outside the ward before visiting and she was very upbeat. When we sat by his bedside, he said he’d had enough and just wanted to die. Obviously, we disagreed and pointed out that things were getting better; there was light at the end of the tunnel. He was adamant; he wanted to go. While we understood how much pain and suffering, he’d endured, we (selfishly I suppose) wanted him to get better. I had to go to work at that point. My wife phoned me that evening; the doctor had decided to let him go home, to die where he was happiest.

The following afternoon a hospital bed and oxygen apparatus were delivered and set up in his living room and he followed. My wife, her brother and sister spent the evening with him and all slept in the living room that night. In the morning, his ninety-year-old sister visited. While she held his hand he slipped away, peacefully, in his own home and surrounded by the people he loved. He is still missed every day. He was seventy-six years old. The funeral was arranged for a Monday in late January.

The night before the funeral, I’d just finished ironing all of our clothes for the following morning. Getting ready to go to bed I felt a pain in the middle of my chest, as if someone was kneeling on my Sternum. I’d had the pain a couple of times over the previous fortnight and it had eventually passed. This time it grew more intense. It wasn’t really all that painful; somewhere between discomfort and pain. Then I started shaking and sweating. I insisted it was not worth calling a doctor, especially since we had the funeral the following morning. When my face turned grey, my wife had other thoughts. A paramedic duly arrived and performed an ECG in the bedroom.

“Hmmm. Let’s get him downstairs.”

He said, then. “Ambulance; code red.” Into his radio.

Downstairs he performed another ECG and said “You’re having a heart attack.”

“Having?”

“Yes.”

“Not had?”

“No.”

The ambulance arrived and a paramedic trundled me quickly and bouncily into the awaiting ambulance.

“If I scream, do we go faster?”

“No.”

My eldest son travelled with me, my wife and two other kids followed in her car. We were put into a waiting room and the paramedics stayed with us. Around two hours after the initial call I asked the first paramedic.

“Am I still having a heart attack?”

“Oh yes, it can go on for hours. As long as the muscle is treated before it dies, you’ll be OK”

Eventually I was wheeled on a trolley into the catheter lab. A huge TV screen on my left and a surgeon on my right, behind a clear plastic sheet (X-ray guard). A grey rectangular object hung above my face and chest, approximately the size and shape of a 17” computer monitor. It whizzed around at the operative’s command. I was ordered to keep my right hand still, facing upright. He injected some dye into it and the X-ray thing whizzed around, tracking the dye into my heart. He apologised before injecting something into my wrist; it was VERY cold. Then I could feel him pushing a minute, plastic tube into my wrist. I couldn’t feel it as it travelled up the vein inside my arm, across my chest and into the lower rear artery of my heart. My heart began to burn at this point. When a muscle burns it means it’s dying. I mentioned this to the doctor and he replied “Keep still.”

That was when I had the realisation; the realisation that I might not see tomorrow. In a situation like that your mind goes into overdrive, it processes information at an astonishing rate. I accepted my death; I wasn’t happy about it but I accepted it. There’s no appeals process; how you feel about it is irrelevant, not wanting to die doesn’t make it any less likely to happen. There is no grim reaper, no big baddie to come and carry you away. Your DNA has an expiry date written into it and my time was now; I was weirdly OK with it.

The kids were 22, 20 and 18, so adults; technically. My Mum had died when I was twenty and although I was devastated, I’d turned out well enough. The mortgage was covered by insurance and my life assurance would pay out £100,000. I relaxed and waited for the inevitable. The thing I found most upsetting was that the last face I would see was a very pleasant, young, Indian doctor. Not my wife, not my children, not my siblings or my best friend, a young doctor. I didn’t even know his name. A few minutes later…

“Got it!”

Within two seconds the pain vanished. The X-ray machine swung out of the way, he swept the plastic sheet away and smiled at me. Then he gave me a stern look as he stood up.

“You nearly died tonight because you smoke.”

“Not anymore.” I smiled back.

My wife and kids raced home and caught an hour’s sleep before they attended the funeral. I of course couldn’t attend.

I was kept in Wythenshawe Hospital for two more days, just in case I had a relapse or a bad reaction to the drugs, which I will have to take for the rest of my life.

So that was where I was; fifty years old, having had a heart attack meant I was quite likely to have another. My Mum had died at fifty-eight from her third cancer and I’d had a brain scan a few years previously when I was told I had a ‘spotty brain’. This was caused by dozens of tiny strokes; no symptoms, I wasn’t even aware of them but it meant I would almost certainly suffer a full stroke at some point. I had the full set; my demise before the age of sixty wasn’t certain but it wouldn’t be a massive surprise.

Being self-employed, I didn’t have a pension and I hadn’t paid National Insurance for twenty-five years. Since turning thirty I’d been panicking, thinking I could never retire; I’d have to keep climbing ladders, lifting floorboards, drilling through walls and crawling around in lofts and under floors into my seventies or eighties. I didn’t have to worry about that anymore; it was quite a relief.

I called my life insurance company to double check my cover. My policy lasted until I turned sixty-two and couldn’t be extended. I’d probably be long dead by then so my family would be OK.

When celebrities have a heart attack or some other ‘scare’ they appear on chat shows and talk about the wake-up call; how they spend time with their families, smell the flowers, swim with dolphins etc. I’m not a celebrity, I have to earn a living and you can’t make a living swimming with dolphins. I eased off my workload and had a quick nap as soon as I got home from work every day. I just had to tread water until something killed me off. On my fifty-first birthday I felt an odd sense of achievement, I felt the same on each subsequent birthday until my fifty-eighth. That was when I began to panic again; only four more years before my insurance expired. I’d enjoyed perfect health since the heart attack, regular health checks showed no signs of my impending, tragically early death. Surviving past sixty-two would be a disaster!

There was only one logical course of action; I had to intervene, I had to cause my own death. As I left for work on Wednesday morning I kissed and hugged my wife goodbye, trying not to give away that it was the last time she’d see me alive. I drove half a mile away and parked in a side street. I called J & J Mothershead, the Hamahatzu dealership.

“Hello, yes, I’d like to book a test drive in an XG3000… The Fastard, yes…. Twelve noon would be perfect… Thank you.”

I sat in the driver’s seat, plugged the rectangular, digital key into the recess under the steering wheel and gently brushed the ignition touch screen with the pad of my index finger. It sprang to life with a deafening roar; it had been nicknamed ‘the Fastard’ for very good reasons. I performed a three-point turn, spinning the tiny steering wheel and struggling to keep a slow, controlled speed. The car dealership was situated just off the motorway, fortunately. I drove down the acceleration lane, found a gap in the traffic and let rip. It was a monster! It wanted to go faster all the time. I fired straight across to the fast lane and headed out of town. I was doing 140MPH and the car wasn’t breaking a sweat.

I left the motorway at the sign for The West Pennine Moors. My heart was pounding mainly because of the speed but the breakfast couldn’t have helped. I drove along the winding country road, still concentrating hard on kerbing the speed of the beast. I passed the dirty, rusted sign for Oxthorpe Industrial Estate; an abandoned mill complex dating from the seventeen hundreds, it nestled in a deep valley. I parked at the top of a very steep hill, a huge, dark, imposing mill at the bottom, about a mile away. I took a deep breath and rammed my foot down. Half way down the hill I was doing 120MPH and still accelerating. The shadow of the mill swallowed the daylight around the car, the engine growled angrily, as the redbrick building filled my view I closed my eyes. An electronic tweeting sound filled the car and it slowed down.

Baffled, I stamped on the accelerator but still it slowed, I jabbed at the brakes but to no avail. The car was in control and obviously didn’t share my death wish. The car came to a stop and an electronic voice said “Catastrophe averted”. The engine automatically shut down. I slumped forward onto the steering wheel.

“Bastards!”

Technology is wonderful when it works but all too often it doesn’t; I decided to try again. I sped back to the top of the hill and tried again with exactly the same result. Those oh so clever Japanese had decided not to aid in my suicide. I went for an aimless drive in the country; I hadn’t formulated a plan B. I found a straight length of road with severe humps and jumped the car over them. I spent about half an hour jumping back and forth before I got bored and headed further out into the Pennines.

Climbing a ridiculously steep hill, I saw a sign announcing “Dangerous corner. Slow down”. Around the bend at the top, sure enough, there was the dangerous corner. Beyond it, the gradient continued upwards. If I went to the top and came back down, I could easily shoot off at the bend and drop around a hundred feet. I drove to the top; even the Fastard struggled with the climb and did a three-point turn. Deep breath, foot down, I hurtled towards the bend. Fifteen feet before the edge the brakes applied, at the bend the steering wheel took control and guided the car around the bend, it parked the car safely and the voice said. “Catastrophe averted”.

The engine shut down. This was useless; the car wasn’t going to allow me to kill myself or it. I headed back towards town in a hurry; the ‘coronary colossus’ was making an escape bid. I parked on the forecourt and dashed into the office. Throwing the keys on the desk I exclaimed.

“Don’twantitsorryIneedthetoilet!” I dashed to the lavatory.

Fifteen minutes later and about a stone lighter I emerged, picked up my keys and driving licence and explained that I really needed something with more seats. I sat in my car and breathed heavily, weighing up my options. I’d just have to hope nature took its course in the next four years.

I drove around aimlessly for the afternoon, deep in thought. I looked for suitable suicide methods everywhere but none were quite right. It had to look like a viable accident; I couldn’t have anyone know it had been a suicide.

At around 8.00 I headed home. I walked through the front door and announced I was home; no answer. There were loud voices coming from the back garden, I walked through and Karen and the kids were screaming joyously. As I approached the back door, Karen ran to me, hugging and kissing me.

“What’s going on?”

“We won!”

“Won what?”

“The lottery! You don’t have to worry about retiring; not with thirty-four million pounds in the bank.”

“We won the… thirty-four mi…!” I gasped. I had butterflies in my stomach, then a pressing feeling on my chest. Karen forced a glass of Bucks Fizz into my hand. I drank it, joining in with the laughter and rejoicing. The pressing feeling in my chest intensified. I collapsed on the lawn. Karen saw what was happening and panicked, she told the kids to call for an ambulance. About a minute later I felt my last heartbeat. I waited for the next but it didn’t arrive. Then everything went black.