Cracking open the Heart – p2 Current beliefs Vs Old beliefs

Heart Challenge? Eek!

In my last post I had just been intuitively nudged into the A & E department of the hospital. You mentionchest pain in there and boy do you get A1 service. Plus a bonus for me was that I knew the nurses and I had arrived at aquiet time.

Within about 10 minutes they had me hooked up to everything and dropping a few pills to boot. Add to that a needle stuck in my arm just in case and I was feeling better. As a general statement, I am confused about a few things that happened over the next few days. My confusion comes from a lack of understanding rather than from any drugs that I was on. As a for instance…

Why is it that in the Cardiac ward there is a woman that comes around every few hours offering you tea or coffee? both of these are stimulants aren’t they? Why are they offered in a specialist cardiac ward? Anyone?

I digress. My feelings of being better were primarily because of the morphine that they had me on. I wasn’t in a complaining mood. Yummy. Anyway, they tested my blood and found something thatmight indicate that I had had a heart attack. The result of which was…more tests. Lovely.

A day later and they were still puzzled. Time to upgrade my tests. So they sent me to the par excellence in heart care hospital. Broadgreen in Liverpool.

They have wifi enabled monitors there and you can use your mobile and laptop. A stressed business mans dream cardiac ward.Oh yes and free coffee and tea 3 times a day (no herbal teas)??

Angiogram and a bet

Personally speaking I have a very cool definition of faith. Anything spiritual and I don’t mind the lack of evidence to support it. Anything of this world however and I do feel the right to have some kind of evidence. Even if that evidence is based on my personal rules.

My rules for evidence are highly soft. A crow flying in a particular direction at a particular time in a particular environment equals evidence in my book.

I was in this establishment for an angiogram. Here is the wiki page for angiograms. About two in the afternoon the Doc (Consultant) dropped in to my bed and gave me the gen (details). Basically here were the odds of misadventure during the procedure…

• 1/200 chance of a heart attack
• 1/200 chance of a stroke
• 1/1000 chance of death

Misadventure? I don’t think that was the word he used. Why go through with it then I asked. Because you’ll know what is right or wrong. Otherwise you won’t know. See? This is why I started with that little bit about faith. I could have faith that all is fine or I could look for evidence.

If you have been keeping up with my posts you’ll know that I like my evidential stuff. So I decided to roll the dice (I know, sounds dramatic but the procedure wasn’t as death defying as I’m making out. Give me some poetic license please). I asked the quack, er doc, what the tests might show. He gave the following…

1. Everything is fine and it was an aberation
2. Something is wrong but meds will sort it
3. You’ll need a stent or two to fix it
4. You’ll need a bypass.

In his estimation (how did he estimate it?) it was going to be somewhere between 3 and 4. Interesting.

You know, I have a good sense of self. Present physical circumstances taken into consideration I just know (knew) that I have a good heart. I don’t mean in a physical sense (although I don’t see why it shouldn’t encompass that) but in a hmmm life sense. Of course I am saying it myself but in personal opinion knowing you have a good heart is only worth anything if you can say it of yourself. Other peoples opinion is just that, other peoples opinion.

My point is this. I know my heart is good. With this evidential certainty in mind I challenged the quacks assertion. I bet that I fall in the 1/2 category. He smiled one of those wipe it of his face smile and took the bet.

Caileach makes an appearance

Really? Caileach? Hey, I have no control of who my subconscious conjures in an emergency. To preamble this a little bit, I’d like to take you through the psychological trash we accumulate in life (I’m no exception)…

From about an hour into my heart challenge experience to pretty much just after hearing the results of my angio. I had the occasional bout of irrationality. I laugh even as I type this because most of this blog falls into the category of irrationality however what I am talking about here is irrationality of the irrational kind. Bare with me. The first bogey that inflicts you is one of ignore it and it’ll go away. Reminiscent of the Bugblatter Beast of Traal…

The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast is so mind-bogglingly stupid that it thinks that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you. Therefore, the best defense against a Bugblatter Beast is to wrap a towel around your head.

Actually this is quite true IF we had the power of intent. We could literally intend away anything, even death, if the masters of intent are to be believed. Alas, I haven’t reached that stage of development yet. Thus I was occasionally plagued with the “It’ll all go away if I ignore it” thoughts.

The second bogey in the air was the praying to a higher power, God for instance. It’s not that I am averse to prayer. It’s the method that is instilled in us (or to be specific, me) that riles me. I had the occasional bouts of this, fortunately my personal understanding of things took steps to quell this.

Prayer (the way I was brought up) is a beseeching kind of affair. “Oh God, please let everything be okay” Eugh! I ditched these anachronistic durges for more interesting ones, such as…”If there is any being out there willing to lend a hand to help me recover with a no strings attached policy, then you are most welcome to do so.” Hey, you might think it is a bit over the top, but as a magi of sorts. Words are power, agreements doubly so! And even in dangerous times such as that I wasn’t going to sell my energy for extra crumbs.

Another version of this was a call to my energy double. You see, it’s when the perverbial shit is hitting the fan, that ones personal beliefs are tested. And, again, if I do say so myself, I handled myself admirably.In fact, when I think back over the last couple of weeks I pat myself on the back (no one else will).

Did a call to my energy self work? I think (and dowsed) it to be so. As always, we can’t see the alternative path…what would have happened if I had not got directed into A & E? Who knows, indeed, who cares?

The third bogey that plagued me was that truly detestable bargaining bogey! This one goes something like this…”If you make everything okay then I’ll never do x again” Seriously? I hope that was the morphine! But I confess, such notions are ingrained in us and they come out and besmirch our power during times of struggle. Let me tell you, I nixed those thoughts with nuclear power. No mercy!

So…I was taken into a oldie worldie dungeon (Broadgreen is going through renovations) for the angiogram. I prayed that they didn’t go via the groin (eugh) and it was granted (er…). They went in via my hand instead.

And, as I said, as they pushed the tube through my vein, Caileach made an appearance…

Kal Malik