recovery

I am alive and back. (See last post for where I went, if you want to catch up).

I am currently just taking it easy to let the general anaesthetic drugs work their way though my system, and dealing with some physical discomfort around my chest area. I guess this will be from the muscles aching around the area of the pads they fitted to me front and back, with them having tensed a fair amount with the electric power passed through them.

I don't know how much power exactly, but I'd like to think it was enough that they had to do the Casualty/ER thing of smacking the two things that look like irons on my chest,  shouting "CLEAR!", and then my body convulsed and someone previously stressed and concerned-looking, smiled, and said "We've got him."

It probably wasn't like that though.

I remember getting on the operating table, being asked to lie down while four different people busied around fitting all the monitoring gubbins, some adhesive conducting pads on my chest and back, and a canula was inserted in the top of my hand. Then they put an oxygen mask on and asked me to take three deep breaths, and warned me that I'd feel the cold of the anaesthetic drugs going in. A man said it'll probably be about twenty seconds for me to go out, and I remember thinking at one stage that perhaps they hadn't done enough of it, because I felt quite awake still...

Then I woke up in a different place, looking up at a different ceiling, with no one there and nothing beeping. And I didn't know why I was there, how I'd got there, when it was, nor actually who I was.

That lasted for a good while, then a nurse appeared in my vision (blurry because I'd removed my glasses earlier) and I could see I had a mask on. I thought perhaps I'd been in an accident at first. Then about ten seconds later, while he busied himself with attaching me to various machines and chatted, "Welcome back, you're in recovery.", it gradually came back to me that I'd been in for the cardioversion procedure this morning.

The first thing I noticed was the beeping of the pulse machine. It was regular, in a normal sinus rhythm. This sounded hopeful for the success of the procedure, after the nine months of completely random beating and racing. Then the blood pressure sleeve did its inflate and squeeze thing, and the nurse reported an entirely normal 110/85 - this morning it had been 140/119 - and he reported a nice steady pulse rate of 42, which he expected to speed up a little as I became more awake.

As hoped, the cardioversion procedure had obviously sorted things out, which was a relief as they'd said beforehand that it doesn't always. The nurse left me and said he'd be back in about twenty minutes to check all the readings again.

I took the chance to close my eyes, breathe deeply and totally relax - the sort of physical relaxing I hadn't been able to do properly without some form of underlying anxiety, as my awareness settled on my whacky heartbeat, for months. It was beautiful. And sound-tracked by a welcome, regular beep of the pulse machine.

And that was it. Two hours later, after being closely monitored for trouble-free returning to consciousness, I was unplugged, got dressed, and then was being chauffeured home by my wife, ready to recuperate for a few days. None of this lying about in a valuable NHS bed for a day or two.

Anyway, hopefully that'll be it now. A return to my woefully uneventful and uninteresting normal life can follow, and I can finally try to find something entertaining to be writing about. Although it'll probably have to be made up if it is to be entertaining.