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One year on from a near-death experience
May. 20th, 2008 06:17 pmLast weekend was the mid-May two-day holiday here in Edinburgh. On the corresponding Tuesday last year, I was released from hospital with my new pacemaker.
My scariest memory of the day of the crash wasn't in the car itself. The cause of the accident was me losing consciousness (which was in turn due to my heart beating much too slowly), so I don't remember much about the actual accident. When I came round, I thought I'd just fallen asleep, which would have been stupid and given rise to dangerous consequences but was something I would have understood. Worse was coming round again in the ambulance after a further blackout (actually my third, although I thought it was my second). That was when I realised something else was wrong, that I didn't know what, and that I didn't know whether I was going to recover.
It was worse for Mrs. HtC & M, of course. They were conscious while the car left the road and careened across the field. They were conscious when the paramedic told the ambulance driver to pull over so that he could give me an injection to bring me round. They had to wait in the hospital while I was tested and X-rayed and operated on for the first time. She tells me that time passed in a bit of a blur, which is not surprising.
This wasn't a near-death experience in the proper sense of the phrase. I didn't see a choir of angels or a ghostly light or anything. It's not even the case that the pacemaker is keeping me alive; rather, it's letting me live a normal life by keeping me from blacking out again. So my title for this post is rather hyperbolic, but it does reflect how I think about the event. Perhaps I should adjust my thoughts to a less terminal view: one in which there was an accident but I was fortunate, no-one was hurt, let alone coming anywhere near death.
One year on, I am pretty much completely recovered. I feel that I get tired more easily, but that might just be the effects of middle-age, or it might be that I won't push myself as hard as I used to. Although I have no proof that the incident was partly triggered by stress, it seems likely enough to encourage me to keep my stress levels within reason.
Indeed, I have no idea how often the pacemaker is actually needed. It kicks in whenever my heart rate drops below 60 beats a minute, but that happens quite frequently when I'm inactive. It doesn't follow that all such occasions would lead to me blacking out.
Psychologically, I'm a bit more fatalistic and a bit more melancholy than before the crash. I've also had these streaks, countered by a larger flash of optimism. The crash has increased my level of uncertainty about the future and lowered my optimism. Perhaps it's time to rethink this as well.
My scariest memory of the day of the crash wasn't in the car itself. The cause of the accident was me losing consciousness (which was in turn due to my heart beating much too slowly), so I don't remember much about the actual accident. When I came round, I thought I'd just fallen asleep, which would have been stupid and given rise to dangerous consequences but was something I would have understood. Worse was coming round again in the ambulance after a further blackout (actually my third, although I thought it was my second). That was when I realised something else was wrong, that I didn't know what, and that I didn't know whether I was going to recover.
It was worse for Mrs. HtC & M, of course. They were conscious while the car left the road and careened across the field. They were conscious when the paramedic told the ambulance driver to pull over so that he could give me an injection to bring me round. They had to wait in the hospital while I was tested and X-rayed and operated on for the first time. She tells me that time passed in a bit of a blur, which is not surprising.
This wasn't a near-death experience in the proper sense of the phrase. I didn't see a choir of angels or a ghostly light or anything. It's not even the case that the pacemaker is keeping me alive; rather, it's letting me live a normal life by keeping me from blacking out again. So my title for this post is rather hyperbolic, but it does reflect how I think about the event. Perhaps I should adjust my thoughts to a less terminal view: one in which there was an accident but I was fortunate, no-one was hurt, let alone coming anywhere near death.
One year on, I am pretty much completely recovered. I feel that I get tired more easily, but that might just be the effects of middle-age, or it might be that I won't push myself as hard as I used to. Although I have no proof that the incident was partly triggered by stress, it seems likely enough to encourage me to keep my stress levels within reason.
Indeed, I have no idea how often the pacemaker is actually needed. It kicks in whenever my heart rate drops below 60 beats a minute, but that happens quite frequently when I'm inactive. It doesn't follow that all such occasions would lead to me blacking out.
Psychologically, I'm a bit more fatalistic and a bit more melancholy than before the crash. I've also had these streaks, countered by a larger flash of optimism. The crash has increased my level of uncertainty about the future and lowered my optimism. Perhaps it's time to rethink this as well.
