Nucleur Medicine, Burger King

My husband had to spend a few hours at the general hospital for tests on his heart, following the chest pain episode a few weeks back.

All went well for the first test. He had to spend some time n the hospital getting jabbed with radian, he then takes an hours break and comes back for scanning. All together about 3 hours. The second test is called a stress test. Very similar but he is injected with something to simulate exercise. This may have been the fly in the ointment actually.

At the end of the first session he is send away to the cafe for something to eat and drink & must return after an hour for the scan. He remembers queueing to get into the cafe area and the next thing he knows he is lying on the floor, waking up from a sleep he thinks, with 'hundreds' of people standing over him. Oops.

I have a phone call at work. This is A&E in Southampton. Oh my god, who is in A&E runs through my brain. First thought, my eldest son has an injury at work. I know that my husband is there for tests but not A&E. But yes, it is. I drive down to the hospital, get sent up a one way street by a work man (who shouts a bit more than is entirely necessary i think), car park is full and secondary car park has a queue of around 30 cars. I drive out of the back of the hospital and off down the road, finally parking in a staff car park. The walk is long and sweaty for someone with a trapped nerve in her hip and an inclination to migraines. Feeling very stressy at this point. The footpath is closed and I need to walk out on to the other road and up the one way street again. Grumpy, flushed and headachey I finally arrive at A&E. My husband looks a picture of health, despite the ECG monitors. I, however, look half dead.

Plenty of chance to get get my breath back and things do not happen quickly in A&E. The best way to test his heart to see if there is a problem is the nuclear medicine test that has been abandoned half way through. We go back up to Nuclear Medicine. The porter pushes my husband, clad in his A&E nightie, a in wheel chair. You are dressed very unusually for nuclear medicine says he. Normally it is outpatients only. Ah, says my husband. I started off up here before I went to A&E. Ha ha says the porter, you're the man that closed Burger King at lunchtime! Yep, that's him. The porter tells everyone we meet and for the rest of the day everyone makes the obvious jokes about Burger King being bad for your health.

Finally we are allowed to leave by the end of the evening. The heart is beautiful and without blemish! On the way out my husband insists on burger king for supper (the first meal since breakfast 14 hours before). There is nothing like being really hungry, even I enjoy it. We escape unrecognised into the night, no longer famous.