Testing, Testing...

I experienced a truly lousy night. Woke the first time at 1:30. I easily read the clock on the opposite wall to my bed, in the soft light coming from the nurses' station, just across the hall from my room. The curtain wall was not completely drawn.

I could also see the white bulletin board on the white-painted wall, next to the clock. It read 'Critical Care Unit', the date, name of the nurse on call dedicated to my immediate welfare, and the name of the staff cardiologist who was looking after me.

The blood pressure cuff was on automatic and every time it squeezed it woke me. It was as though I was wearing my very own lively and emphatic python concentrating itself on my upper arm. The electrodes all over my chest and their tubes snaking over to that monitor beside the bed; a tall, grey hulking bulk like a medical obelisk bristling with technology, which also held the IV drip administering the drug to stop my stomach bleeding and the second blood bag, earlier transfused, had earlier been replaced by a saline solution.

My haemoglobin count, they said earlier, had come up. My heart now beating too fast, had to be slowed down. There was medication for that. For someone who prided herself on having no chronic illnesses at my age, and who never even took over-the-counter medications, this was a total reversal. I was now taking a veritable cocktail of powerful drugs. And then another ultrasound to be performed. Early tomorrow morning. Rest now.

Can't sleep? The nurse has come in at 4:00 am for a blood sample, to see if the lab could isolate the presence of those enzymes that indicate a heart attack had occurred. She swiftly draws the three vials, tenderly pulls the white sheet to my chin, gently pats my arm and departs.

And I am left with my darkly despairing, creepy thoughts. The muted sounds and soft voices from the nurses' station are fleetingly and slightly comforting.

This was a totally new experience for me. I've always enjoyed good health. Rarely saw our family doctor, because I was never ill. Except for the time I somehow contracted shingles, and that did not require a hospital stay. I cannot recall the last time I was admitted to a hospital. The birth of our three children: check. Oh yes, the last time most surely was when I had the elective procedure that ensured there would be no more children. That would be almost forty years ago.

The hum and ping of the obelisk are clearly not designed to give confidence to the unfortunates who have been plugged into its diagnostic potential; the sound seems menacingly intrusive, portending conclusions that must be truly catastrophic.

I cannot find comfort. Physical nor psychological. Comfort eludes me; either within my throbbing head, nor on the bed to which I am tethered. I cannot shift too far one way or the other on the narrow, white, mechanized hospital bed. It is ill-advised to be so restless. The blood pressure cuff, suddenly alive again, murmuring in its relentlessly firm grip, and the snakes-den of tubes are not amenable to comfort.

My stomach is churning and I carefully manage to exit the bed to move the three feet to the commode to relieve myself, trailing wires and tubes. I do not flush, unwilling to have Nurse Liz come running. And finally, slowly and awkwardly settle back into the now-crumpled bed sheets.

Instantly, the nurse comes rushing in: "one of your electrode contacts has come off!" And I recognize a new "ping" as though the device has plaintively revealed at the nurses' station my wicked non-compliance.

Nurse Liz re-attaches the errant electrode, fusses with the bedsheets, again drawing the upper one smoothly over me. She smiles reassuringly, and pats my arm again before withdrawing.

Finally, I've fallen asleep.

My fretting mind, wondering how I'll ever "catch up" with my life, manage to get things done, all the routine things requiring energetic intervention - cleaning the house, preparing the garden for fall, looking after my husband - crowded in on me during the night.

A sense of dark panic: would I ever be the same again? Remain in a perpetual state, after this, as a life-depleted force? How would we ever cope?

I tried to will myself to be reasonable; things would work out. I did my best to persuade myself to let my body relax enough to sleep. Knowing full well it would be useless. What did work for me when sleep eluded, was pleasant thoughts. And under these rather abruptly untoward circumstances that had swooped down on my life, pleasant thoughts had fled the scene.

Gloom and helpless, dismal and frightening prospects for a dire future had kicked, pummelled and shoved "pleasant" out in favour of shuddering apprehension.

Try to be a little more mature, I scolded myself. You're in good hands. In the best health-care institution in the area, a medical centre of excellence. Skilled cardiologists, practised and highly professional nurses and technicians. State-of-the-art, computerized diagnostic equipment.

Sleep did eventually release me from that torment of self-induced fear.

Then my name sharply spoken. The light of dawn not yet seen through the room's narrow window. The sharp flash of the overhead light, and the crisp, three-letter explanation: 'E.K.G.", confused my foggy brain. A yellow-haired technician beside my bed, trundling her apparatus into place, repeating to my dumbly bleary face: "E.K.G."

No smile, personal introduction, nor hesitation as she peremptorily snapped, "straight on your back, please", lifting the top sheet, groping under my hospital gown, slapping cold, hard, greased
contacts on my chest, breast, arms, ankles - to take the impressions she is formally tasked to do.

I stare blankly, attempt a pleasantry. She, soundless in response, jerks the wires off the contact points, leaves the cold, sharp, greasy stickers on my body, yanks the top sheet roughly over me, and departs.