Episode 16 – The One with the Heart Attack

I woke up feeling good, which should have been the first clue.

Sun was out, nothing ached, and I'd decided today was finally the day I cracked on with the floor. Nipped out for cheap brushes, went to Homebase, found it shut for good — not shut for the day, shut permanently, which I'd somehow missed. So Wickes instead, all warehouse lighting and blokes in DeWalt gear buying decking. Came out with a tin of something called Clean Spirits, which as far as I can tell cleans nothing whatsoever, and a pack of brushes that started shedding bristles before I'd opened them properly.

Still. Bacon roll, brown sauce, morale high.

And then somewhere between the car park and the A-road the whole lot just drained out of me. Not tired exactly. More like someone had gone into the van while I was paying for parking and taken the battery out.

I decided it was the bug. Everyone had the bug. I went home, ate something, slept it off, and woke up worse — that washed-out, head-full-of-wet-sand feeling that coffee doesn't touch and stubbornness doesn't fix. I'd been blaming a mystery virus since January at that point. Nine months of putting it down to a bug.

It wasn't a bug.

A&E

I'll spare you most of it because it's the bit everyone's seen on telly. Beeps. Wires. A nurse moving at that particular speed they move at when they're not panicking but they are definitely not hanging about either. Two ECGs, chest X-ray, bloods.

Then someone said "you've had a heart attack, and we think you're still having one," which is a sentence that puts your entire life behind glass for a second.

After that there were drugs good enough that I spent a while counting the curtain rail and finding the whole situation genuinely funny. Had a second, smaller one while I was in there. Ended up on a ward with stickers all over my chest and a monitor that never once shut up.

The bit that actually stings

I like the grind of a van build. That's the honest truth of it. It's physical and fiddly and it gives your brain something to chew on instead of everything else.

So the thing that got me wasn't the hospital. It was coming home and not being able to breathe properly after carrying one sheet of 18mm ply about ten metres.

I'm on a fistful of pills now. I'm gassed after a mile and a half. I nap like it's a competitive sport. Four weeks off driving, six weeks off work, a house to move out of and a van that isn't finished. One of my dogs died while I was in hospital. There's employment stuff going on in the background that I won't get into here, but it isn't doing my blood pressure any favours either.

I'm not fishing for sympathy with any of that. It's just what was actually happening, as opposed to what a two-minute video of me sanding a floor would suggest was happening.

What changed

I'd always worked on the basis that if something hurt you carried on until it stopped. Which is fine for a bad back. Less effective when it's your heart, as it turns out, and it's a decent part of how I ended up on that ward.

So I build slower now. Not in a wise-and-serene way — mostly in an irritating way, where I put a tool down and have to sit on the step for ten minutes.

Two-person jobs are two-person jobs now, and if there's nobody about, the thing waits. I do twenty-five minutes and then stop, whether or not I feel like stopping, because I've learned I'm a terrible judge of that in the moment. I get ply cut at the timber yard rather than wrestling full sheets, and I've raised the workbench so I'm not folding in half every time I go looking for the one Torx bit I own.

I've also got a lot more relaxed about using lighter materials. Nobody's ever going to inspect this van and award points for heaviest possible construction.

The stuff that keeps the van habitable I'm actually stricter about than before. Heater serviced, CO alarm tested every week, first aid kit restocked, water and electrics checked. It's a life support system as much as it's a home, and I'd been treating it as a project.

If you're reading this feeling knackered

Get checked. That's the only bit of this I'd actually push on anyone.

I'd been waving it off with jokes and Lemsip for the best part of a year while my blood pressure was apparently sat comfortably in stage 2 hypertension. There was no dramatic clutching-the-chest moment. It was just being tired, for ages, and explaining it away every single time.

The NHS saved my bacon. And my bacon roll.

Still here

There's been a stupid amount of small joy in the last few weeks, mind. The diesel heater clicking back into life. Pulling up a bit of old floor and finding clean metal underneath and deciding that's the day's win, that'll do. Making a Star Wars joke at a nurse while absolutely off my face on pain relief and her laughing at it, which she probably didn't have to do.

The next episode isn't going to be a montage of insulation going in and an engine turning over triumphantly. It'll be small steps, a lot of tea, swearing at badly labelled screws, and lists that get one line shorter a day. Some weeks the only progress will be that I ordered the screws.

But the van's still mine and the road's still there, so we'll get there eventually.

See you in Episode 17.