Grey to Gold

Ministerial Meandering

Grey to gold

Very occasionally a thought comes to me - and I have to sit down to enjoy the rare moment.  Just such an occasion visited me this week.  I had some medical news that I really wasn’t expecting, and surprised me, if I’m honest.  Never having had a symptom from my heart throughout my life, I was sent for a cardiac angiogram - ‘just to check it’s all right’.

‘Waste of time,’ I thought, and then I thought perhaps it wasn’t.

Why anyone would want to do angiograms on perfectly healthy people was beyond me.  But then I thought back to the time when I had been in practice as a vascular surgeon; then I had agreed with my urological colleague to refer to me any men over 60 with high blood pressure who he had sent for abdominal ultrasound.  For his purposes, he wanted to look at their kidneys; I was interested in their abdominal aorta - to see if it was aneurysmal (dilated).  These men would be equally without symptoms from their dilated aneurysms, but they were sitting - some of them - on time bombs, which could quite literally go ‘Bang!’ - and then they would be in deep trouble.

So I had a bit of shock when I found that my angiogram was not as pristine as I would have hoped.

It led me to wonder about relying too much on my future plans.  It made me completely reevaluate my life in the light of that light being potentially switched off at any moment, without any warning.  It made me look at what I had - not what I might have wanted.  It made me look at things which previously had looked rather dull and grey, and see them as gifts of enormous worth.  It made me think.  Carefully.  With a little effort I could be a mental alchemist.  I could turn all that was grey in my life into gold!

In case you think I’m about to drop dead in my pew like the predecessor to the Vicar of Dibley, please don’t.  Of course, I cannot guarantee that won’t happen, but I promise not to embarrass you all if I can help it.  I’m sure this will all turn out to be a storm in a teacup, but the ‘urgent’ cardiology appointment that is being requested, I am told is likely to be ‘at least 3 months’.  Don’t we all love the Canadian medical system!

My thoughts for this week are to make the most of every day, and try and be a nicer person - heaven knows, there’s room for plenty of that!

Part of my wider thoughts are that I wish more people would live that way - without having to have a stupid diagnosis to give them the wake-up call.

Philip+