The screenshot up top is of something that, at the time, I only mentioned before the scan. It was intended as a check of the health of my heart. I remember it very well, and how much I needed Nigel that day.
It turned out that scan showed my heart was normal (unlike the rest of me?). A couple months later, I was back in hospital with afib, and Nigel looked after me again. Around eight months after that, I was back in hospital with afib yet again, and getting my heart shocked back into sinus (normal) rhythm, and Nigel was, yet again, my rock. Four months later, Nigel died.
Only a month after I lost Nigel, I was back at the clinic mentioned in the “Memory” for a follow-up with the cardiology team after my May 2019 hospitalisation. I remember two things about that follow-up. First, I had to get myself to the appointment alone—again, only one month after Nigel died. Given how much I’d depended on him up to that point, it’s pretty obvious how hard that appointment was on me, and my anxiety was through the roof.
The very, VERY worst part of the whole experience was at the very start, when I checked in with reception. I was handed a clipboard with a form to fill out. I froze when I got to one line: “Emergency contact”. I had to call on all my strength to not burst into tears in the crowded waiting room.
That wasn’t easy, with my mind drowning in tears, and I needed to find a way to bring it back to the surface/ I focused methodically and matter-of-factly on who I could put down on that line. I was going to put Nigel’s sister because she’d always been a backup emergency contact for both Nigel and me. By then I knew I’d be moving to Hamilton at some point, so I wrote down the details for Nigel’s brother. I felt like a fraud doing that; “I don’t HAVE a next of kin anymore!”, my brain was screaming. And sobbing. Even so, focusing on the task worked resulted in little more physical evidence of my deep emotional trauma than somewhat moist eyes as I handed the clipboard back in.
The consultation itself was fine, and it was then that they said the cryoablation was the best option for me if I wanted it. And, I did want it—a lot. As I said at the time:
…it scares the crap out of me that I might have another afib incident while living [at our last house in Auckland], all alone, and have no choice other than to call an ambulance, no matter how difficult that would be (dealing with the dogs, for example). Nigel took care of me when I had an afib incident and helped keep me from freaking out. That’s all gone now, and I have to rely on myself, and that’s frankly terrifying. I’m sure it won’t be the last time I’ll feel that way.The ablation procedure was done in Hamilton in December of 2020, some fourteen months after the traumatic consultation, and after plenty of unnecessary bureaucratic drama was cleared away first. I said in my post about the precedure that I was “keenly aware of the fact Nigel wasn’t with me”, and that was especially true after the procedure when I was alone and in agony. Thinking about that still brings me to tears, even now.
Still, the family was there and helped me through it all. Since then, though, there have been other, less serious times, when some worry or other made me miss having Nigel with me, even if only to calm me down. Some day, maybe, that won’t be as common.
Still, the worst of all the times I missed Nigel was a time that was the least serious: That consultation with the cardiology staff in October, 2019—at the very same place Nigel had been my rock only 15 months earlier, on July 26, 2018.
Nowadays, I don’t have afib or tachycardia, and my health "scares" have been no more serious than a slight worry, or, more commonly, maybe, a “huh—I wonder what’s causing that?” Some day, as is the way of things, something serious will pop up again. I have no idea if I'll still keenly miss have Nigel with me, but I hope that whatever the challenge is, it’s so far into the future that I may be fine on my own.
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