Have you been taking cocaine?”
I am on an operating table in St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin. It is 6am on April 14th, and a few hours ago I had a massive heart attack.
The doctor repeats the question: “Have you been taking cocaine?” I am furious. I gather what strength I have left in my fast-fading body, raise myself up and shout at him: “I Don’t Do Drugs.”
I am furious because, far from being on a cocaine binge the night before, I was in the gym until 11pm, playing a tough three-set tennis match against my regular partner, Daniel. Thanks to playing competitive sport in the past few years I have never been fitter. My cholesterol reading is exemplary, my body-fat ratio impressive and I have the same waist size (32 inches) in my 40s as when I was 17. I cycle. I swim. I am in good shape.
At 11.15pm I am saying goodbye to Daniel and firming up a time for our usual Wednesday night match. At 11.30pm I am brought to my knees by a massive heart attack. At 11.45pm I am doing what any self-respecting man who has just had a massive heart attack would do: taking two Solpadeine and going for a lie-down.
I toss, I turn, I take more Solpadeine. I am convinced I have bronchitis. The pillow is soaked with sweat. I drift off and wake at 5am. I ring my GP. He tells me to ring an ambulance. I don’t remember anything else.
Major, major event
I wake up to hear one doctor saying “You’ve had a major, major event,” and the other asking me about cocaine. I pass out again for a few hours. I come around to find my sister standing beside my hospital bed. That’s funny, us both being sick at the same time and in the same hospital. I hope she hasn’t got the same awful bronchitis I have.
While I was passed out I had an angiogram followed by an angioplasty (a stent). Over the next few hours I learn some horrible truths: I am told I am one of the worst cases they have ever seen in the Coronary Care Unit at St Vincent’s; that when I arrived two of my coronary arteries were 100 per cent blocked; that I wasn’t expected to make it. As a bonus I still need another angioplasty (and soon), but for now there is a dangerous amount of fluid on my lungs.
I haven’t taken any of this in. My only thought is to text Daniel to say, “The only reason you won last night is that I’ve just found out I was playing with two 100 per cent blocked coronary arteries.” But the need to get violently sick is more pressing. There is such a thing as black vomit. It’s the trauma, apparently.
But the trauma turns out to be the easy part. The disbelief, shock and self-loathing are a bit harder. It is Tuesday afternoon and I am hooked up via wires to five or six machines. I have to breathe through an oxygen mask and there are tubes running painfully into my arms. They’ve got the wrong person here. I have things to do today. There has been a terrible mistake.
I am in the High Dependency Unit. A fellow patient comes over to my bed and says: “We all thought you were dead. Do you want a Twix?”
Later that day I begin to feel ashamed and embarrassed by what has happened. I resolve that only family and close friends will know the truth. Luckily, I am finishing a book, so I will tell all and sundry that I’ve gone away for a few weeks to wrestle down the final chapters. I don’t want people to know because I don’t want to be pitied.
All of this makes me less of a man. I will now be seen as weak and vulnerable. When I return to the gym, a blanket will be put over my knees and a cup of tea placed in my hand. I will be patted patronisingly on the back. Poor Brian: you wouldn’t think to look at him now that he is the reigning Leinster mixed doubles semi-finalist.
The texts start to arrive: “I don’t believe it; I am in shock.” “You of all people!”. “You’re either on your bike or on the court, how can this be true?”
I smile ruefully and think of my secret.
But for now I have to tell Daniel that I can’t make tomorrow’s night match. The 42-word text outlining the bare details of what has happened to me takes two hours to type out because I am so convulsed with tears. Pressing “Send” on this text means my previous life is over and I will no longer be of any use to anyone on the tennis court. I weep bitter, self-pitying tears. Why me? My sporting life is over.
Loud sobs
For the first three days and nights in the hospital, I don’t get any sleep and am unable to eat. I just cry instead. At night I sob so loudly that I am convinced the other patients in the unit will sign a petition to ask for the Permanently Crying Man in Bed Six to be moved.
I experience extremes: from the young Indian nurse who sits on my bed and strokes the back of my hand and doesn’t leave until I have fallen asleep, to the terrible things you see and hear in a high-dependency unit. My reaction to the distressing arrival of new, emergency patients is frighteningly childlike: I stick my fingers in my ears and close my eyes tightly.
Here’s my secret: I am crying so much because deep down I know the answer to the question “Why Me?” I am carrying a malignant genetic inheritance. Ten years ago my only brother died from a massive heart attack. It runs in the family and I have been obsessed with looking after myself ever since. I want to fight my inheritance.
When it came for me that Monday night at 11.30pm, it came at me with a vengeance. As I’m repeatedly told: I’m lucky to be alive and it was only my fitness level that pulled me through.
I begin to think differently: I am alive thanks to my regular hitting partners: Daniel, Natalie and Francesco. The latter lives close by, and comes to see me within hours.
Here’s what they don’t tell you: when you’ve been through trauma and a friendly face pitches up at your bedside, you burst into tears. Poor Francesco takes a seat and stares at his shoes for five minutes while I try, and fail, to compose myself.
I tell Francesco about my shame and embarrassment and explain how I am banning the use of the phrase “heart attack” (if nothing else, it’s very ageing) and how I will be using instead “the incident” to refer to what happened that Monday night.
Francesco is from Milan, and English is his second language, but that doesn’t stop him going one better. “We will not say ‘the incident’; we will say ‘the event’,” he says.
I remember the first words I heard the doctor say: “You’ve had a major, major event.” God bless you, San Francesco.
Natalie (my brilliant mixed doubles partner) arrives later doubled over with shopping bags stuffed full of fresh food. She is full of concern and support. Crucially, she talks about a tournament in September that we should be able to play together. I sit up straight in bed and am all ears.
When Daniel arrives, I gleefully inform him that all our previous results are null and void due to my blocked arteries (I am a much, much better tennis player than Daniel but for some reason he always beats me).
He says I have just given a new and really pathetic meaning to the term “bad loser”. I love being able to talk like this again.
Many, many others play their part in drying my tears and making me feel well again. Serious illness is nothing when confronted by serious friendship.
My heart, which was literally broken, is already repairing itself. I have been here 18 long days; tomorrow I go home. As I celebrate with some calf stretches, I realise that This Sporting Life has saved my life.
I got knocked down. But I got up again.
It is midnight. My phone pings with a text from Francesco. It reads: “Be strong, Brian, like you are on the court. Andiamo.”
I sleep like a baby.
Follow Brian on Twitter: @BBOYD100
