"rehab" to the tune of "when i'm sixty-four

Prelude

About 2 years after it happened I decided to write about my experience, from collapsing at the leisure centre to getting back to some sort of normality again.

Horror

Tony! Tony! Tony! a voice shouted at me. Opening my eyes I was aware of a ceiling maybe 25 or 30 feet above me. I was flat out on my back.

Critical

Not knowing what had happened, or the critical state I was in, I looked up at the coach and said, “it must have been your aftershave Glenn”, guessing I must have fainted or something. He didn’t reply, either because he didn’t hear me, or maybe he just didn’t consider it very funny at the time under the circumstances.

Ultrasound

Presence of mind saved the day for me. I could have given him my wife’s mobile number but I was too embarrassed, even in the state I was in, as she was listed on my mobile as ‘Chorley Rock Chick’.

Impossible

On arrival straight into theatre, no mucking about with Accident and Emergency. Into theatre and an angiogram that identified a blocked artery. Onto a high dependency ward and then back the next morning for a procedure to unblock the artery.

Forwards

It was the morphine working little tricks on me, well, the skirting and sills weren’t really moving, but the little figure was. It was the ward cleaner who just seemed to go slowly up and down, non-stop, quietly pushing his soft brush as he crept by, almost like mowing the lawn in one continuous motion.

Score

Hearing a strong Liverpool accent in a hospital bang in the middle of Manchester seemed so unusual. He inquired how I was (I was still a bit groggy from the morphine) and then told me how lucky I had been, something that had been said many times to me by ambulance staff, nurses and doctors during my stay so far in hospital.

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A band so baffling, even their names were contrived. Check your score in the Ramones version of Fact or Fiction.