In the previous episode I told you about the two trips to hospital including: Chest X-rays, Oxygen masks, Blood oxygen sensors, ECGs and being told to cease drugs until otherwise told.

The poorly, or maybe perfectly – depending on how you look at it — timed appointment with Nuclear Medicine was on the Thursday. It required me to do a number of things:

1. Abstain from betablockers for at least 48hrs
2. Abstain from tea/coffee/chocolate for at least 24hrs
3. Starve myself for at least 12 hours
4. Buy myself a fatty snack (such as a cheese sandwich) for after the first part of the test.
5. Obtain a two week sick note from the GP to ensure I could attend the hospital appointments AND recover at the same time.
6. Fill in a form to declare that I was not pregnant.

The test I was summoned for is called a Myocardial Perfusion Scan. It’s a two part test. The first part involved a bit of exercise on a treadmill in order to raise my heart rate. Once I had reached a golden level of heart rate I was injected with a radioactive solution of technetium. I then had to sit in the waiting room, eat a sandwich and wait.

I have to say, I’m thoroughly disappointed with radioactive injections. I was always lead to believe that playing about with radiation results in either tentacles, superpowers or both. I had neither. I tested this by trying to shoot webs from my wrists, phase in and out of the universe and trying to explode myself. I just had to eat the cheese and ham sandwich I bought from the hospital cafe before the test. And it was probably the worst cheese and ham sandwich you could ever have. So horrific I couldn’t post a picture of it here without being banned.

Anyway, about an hour and a half later I was called in for the continuation of the test. This involved me lying on a table under a huge imaging scanner.

To achieve this, you have to lie flat with your arms above you head then the scanner goes over your chest and makes a weird electric humming noise while the technician occasionally tells you to breathe but keep as still as you can for ten minutes. So I lay there and thought about childhood trips to Aberdaron, ice cream and how the reason I felt cold might be the start of radioactive superpowers.

Then just as I was nodding off, it was done. I could go home but I had to return on the Tuesday for part two. I was rather glad really. The previous weekend’s trip to the hospital, a walk across Daventry between GP appointments and general malaise had me feeling like bollocks anyway and all I wanted to do was sleep.

Part two of a myocardial perfusion scan involves:

1. Abstaining from food until after a second injection of technetium.
2. Not growing tentacles or becoming so dangerously radioactive that I would become a human nuclear bomb
3. Sign another form to say I was not pregnant.

This one time it went a bit bollocks though. Now I’ve always been better at having blood removed more than having stuff put into my veins. It’s my non-radioactive superpower. Once I had received my jab, my blood pressure dropped once more to dangerously low levels. The poor technician had to monitor me for an hour to ensure that I wasn’t going to die or anything — but I was determined to just get over it. I wanted:

• a) to go back to work when my sick note ran out
• b) to be able to melt things with my mind
• c) never have to go to the Majors ward in Northampton General Hospital ever again*

In an effort to boost my blood pressure, the technician offered me a cup of tea — but I declined as the hospital tea I’d had when I was a resident there was not tea but a hot brown liquid — possibly bromine solution or some weird brown evil from the depths of hell in a cup.

Eventually they stopped panicking and had me sit in the waiting room to eat my sandwich. This time I bought a chicken ceasar wrap which was a lot more palatable than the dreadful cheese and ham sandwich I’d had on my previous visit.

Again, 90 minutes or so passed before I was called in for the scan thing – following which I was able to sneak a look at the pictures. They look a little bit like these:

I now have to wait to hear back from Cardiology. 18 weeks months years unspecified time periods or so…

Meanwhile I went back to my GP — well one of the locums — who said I should restart taking my tablets again — only gradually and in order of introduction — all nicely in time for my return to work and one final visit to my proper GP on the following Friday.

When I eventually saw my doctor she kept stressing that I’d been “Seriously ill” and that she was pleased I was recovering nicely. I wasn’t sure how to react to that so did my usual shrug and giggle only for her to once again, underline verbally, that I had, in no uncertain terms of the words and stressed with emphasis — been “seriously ill”.

She went through the results the hospital and ambulance had sent through to her — in the UK hospitals don’t like sharing your notes with your GP, instead they have to request them or, alternatively, the consulting doctors in the hospital might write a brief outline of your ailment in a letter to them, stick it in the post with a second class stamp on it and hope that the third class carrier pigeon doesn’t get eaten by a cat. — and revealed that my potassium levels and blood pressures had dropped to ridiculously low levels and that my blood pressure had — kind of — returned to levels it had been before the illness.

Of course, being ill and having time to rest and relax at home means lots of watching Youtube videos about kidney disease, diabetes, endocrinology and metabolic crisis (I totally recommend Dr Alex [https://www.youtube.com/@DrAlexWibberley] for all your hypochondriac and health scare needs) and discussing various symptoms and anecdotes of people, and animals, who have had chronic kidney ailments with your lovely spouse. So I stopped her mid-flow and told her about a furry friend of mine….

Which brings me to good old Quincy the cat.

And maybe I’ll tell you all about how poor old Quincy and I might be more similar than you might think…in the next installment.

* I’ve insisted that next time I’m ill like this Mrs Gnomepants drive me to a better hospital like Royal Liverpool University Hospital or that nice one in Northumbria.