CARDIAC ARREST

Due to some unforeseen circumstances, i.e. the fact that I’m nearly sixty and have high blood pressure, I was summoned to the health centre for a blood test and an ECG. They had made an error – the person who does the blood tests – the phlebotomist (I always thought that was someone who read bumps) was not trained to conduct the ECG. They kindly gave me another appointment for the ECG for later that morning. I sat in the waiting-room waiting for the blood test. It is an inherently depressing place. Several elderly people, all looking apprehensive, sat reading well-thumbed and greasy copies of Country Life. One old man said, conversationally, to an old lady seated next to him: “Thursday’s typically hiring day,” to which she replied “No, I do my washing.” The health centre has an intercom where a light comes on against a doctor’s name and the doctor’s voice summons the poor unfortunate to his or her surgery. The trouble is, the distortion of the acoustics is such that one cannot make out a word of what is being said. The doctors might as well have been speaking in Klingon. This all adds to the terror of anticipation.

The phlebotomist came to the door and beckoned me to follow her. I did so meekly. The room was tiny, and stifling. I felt the rapier thrust of the needle and the lifeblood pumping out of my arm. She closed the wound with a piece of cotton-wool and an elastoplast. I went back to the receptionist. “Is it alright to have my breakfast now? - Only you told me to fast till this was finished” “You can go and have a restaurant dinner, as far as I am concerned,” was her terse reply.

I came back an hour later. I sat in the waiting-room again. Another batch of elderly people was sitting, equally reflectively. Another nurse came to the door and beckoned me. I trooped after her, feeling like a schoolboy going in to see the headmaster. The nurse asked me to strip to the waist and lie down. “Can I keep my boots on?” I asked. She laughed at my idiocy. “By all means,” she replied. The room was also tiny, and also stifling. I lay down and she tutted. “We’ll have to shave you – you’ve got hair where we don’t want it.” “Good job you’re not looking at my brain, then” I replied, “You’d have me bald as a brick.” I noticed that she used a cheap disposable razor. She attached little adhesive pads, like inert leeches, to various parts of my body, including, bizarrely, my shins, and switched on the machine. She took a reading and started back in horror. “I need to switch off your bed”, she said: “it interferes with the readings”. I saw the first, aborted chart later. It looked like a relief map of the Himalayas. The second go was more successful, a few lazy quill-pen markings, a slight hiccup and more quill-pen stuff. “I’ll leave you to remove the electrodes and put your clothes back on – I’ll need the doctor to see this.” I plucked off the leeches one by one, and, in so doing, removed yet more of my precious chest-hair.

The nurse was away for ages. I started to panic. What if my ventricles were all so full of treacle there was hardly a drop of the life-preserving pumping through? What if the rhythm of my heartbeat was two over four rather than the regulation four over four? What if I had enough chloresterol in my veins and arteries to fill a wheelie bin? I studied a calorie chart on the wall. I found out that one uses as many calories walking the dog as one does in playing gents’ doubles at tennis. They had obviously used my doubles exploits as the model.

The nurse eventually returned. “Sorry I took so long, I couldn’t find the duty doctor. Your heart’s fine. See the doctor about your blood test next week.” I left the surgery with a sense of relief so great I felt like the Bradford Bulls coach who said, following a match in which St Helens fielded eleven reserves, that he had been prepared to fight George Foreman and had ended up fighting George Formby.