End of days..........

Yesterday was most definitely not a good day.

Aside from my run-in with the taxman in the morning, the day continued downhill and reached a low point early in the evening when I had to call 999 to request an ambulance for PP, who was near to collapse with what we feared was a heart attack.

People say that in emergency situations, time seems to slow down, but I experienced the exact opposite, and everything sped by in a blur..... from the point at which I decided that I couldn't get her to hospital and that the most sensible path of action would be to call for help, until we arrived at Accident & Emergency, a period of at most 45 minutes, including time spent in the ambulance connecting her up to heart monitor, blood pressure/pulse, oxygen etc.

Thankfully, arriving at hospital by ambulance, does confer certain queue-jumping advantages, neatly bypassing triage, and we were fast-tracked to a cubicle where we spent the next 5 hours, while doctors, nurses and technicians efficiently connected PP to various monitoring equipment, inserted an IV line, administered much needed pain relief, syphoned off what looked like rather a lot of blood, poked, prodded, X-rayed, investigated family history and generally bustled about in a reassuringly calm and measured manner.

Eventually, when they, and we, were satisfied that everything was under control, we were released into the night, to return home by taxi in the early hours of the morning, shaken but relieved.

Small dog, who had been confined to barracks while the paramedics were wheeling PP out to the ambulance, was beside herself with joy when we finally reappeared, and has hardly left PP's side since.

The day today has been fairly low key, fielding phone calls from concerned relatives, and a visit from our neighbour to check all is OK. Having an ambulance parked outside your house does tend to cause a fair amount of interest.

Thankfully PP has had no bad after-effects today, aside from feeling worn out from lack of sleep. Small dog however has valiantly kept up her nap-quota, mostly on PP's lap, so she doesn't do another scary disappearing act.

So now we wait for an appointment with the cardiologist for further tests and hope that there are no more nocturnal alarms and excursions...........

Sobering to think we're only 2 weeks into 2009 and things are going tits up already.
Things can only get better...........?