Sadists

I have had a few near death experiences in my life but the scariest times that I ever did have have been at the hands of doctors.

One occasion stands out. They had decided that there was a big problem with my heart (although it seems now to been a simple case of anaemia causing tachycardia) and wanted to find out how difficult it was to set my heart into a dangerous rhythm.

I am scared of needles and am squeamish so I was quite afraid to begin with. They transferred me from the Middlesex Hospital to The Princess Grace Hospital in Marylebone. The NHS must have been renting the place, it's a private hospital, and I got changed into my hospital gown in a small, wood panelled, private hospital room. I was terrified.

Being wheeled through the basement on my bed was unpleasant, there was building work going on and it looked as though the place had suffered bomb damage. In the cath. lab there was blood on the overhead light. The whole thing felt very much like a horror film and I said as much, asking for something to calm me. They explained that it was in their interests to have me as anxious as possible and ignored me from then on.

So, a cardiac catheter goes into the femoral vein and it is one that can administer electric shocks to the heart. They went through different locations, administering shocks of increasing magnitude. It was really awful. There would be a countdown of five beeps and then this awful electric shock. The fuckers, to think that it was anaemia all along.

Well, they induced tachycardia. They weren’t sure if it was the more dangerous tachycardia that originates in the heart's ventricles or an exceptionally fast normal, sinus rhythm, but they felt the need to give me a shock from the crash trolley all the same. Apparently I was lucky, I was told afterwards, that the burns on my chest weren't too severe.

So that was the most frightening moment. Perhaps because my heart would momentarily race after each shock.

I think that it is wise not to always trust doctors.