As I’d mentioned at the end of the post for Day 3, at 5 pm on that day I had to report to the hospital. Unfortunately, our whole reason for going to Melbourne was that I had to have a heart procedure that could not be done in Tasmania. For over 25 years I’ve had espisodes where my heart races, and it had finally been diagnosed (SVT or supraventricular tachycardia). I had decided to have an electrophysiology study and ablation, so that was what I was there to have carried out. As my procedure would be early on the 9th, I arrived late on the 8th.
I don’t know how much people would actually be interested in the procedure itself. I was awake for the first half of it, while they put wires up my blood vessels into my heart and triggered the tachycardia so they could figure out exactly how it was happening. Then I was put under more deeply while it was ablated. The doctor was fairly certain it went well, which means I should be cured of SVT. I never sleep well in hospital, and from the time I was allowed to walk did laps of the hospital as much as I could. (The first 4 or 5 hours when I wasn’t even allowed to lift up my head were AWFUL.)
Scott and Eskil visited me early in the evening. As soon as they arrived, Scott realised Eskil had dropped Monkey George, so he immediately headed out to retrace their steps. George was found sitting on a fence where some kind stranger had placed him to make him more visible, so they returned to visit me. Petra, Astrid, Nina, and Lee also visited. I exhausted fairly easily.
Originally I was told I wouldn’t leave until the 11th, when I’d also be allowed to fly home. However there was gastro on the ward, so I was discharged on the 10th. Our friend Helen was visiting on her way to work when I was discharged, so I eased my way back into the real world with a coffee and chat with her.
We slowly walked ‘home’ to our holiday flat. The most exciting and memorable thing about our walk home was seeing a man being lowered in the basket of a crane; Eskil still likes to talk about the crane man spinning.
The next day Scott’s friend Jo gave us a lift to the airport, where we were in toddler hell. I wasn’t good for anything, so Scott had the burden of doing everything for me and for Eskil when we were all quite tired and on edge. Sigh.
At least Eskil was able to see lots of airplanes:
And control Scott’s head to make sure he saw them too:
And he rode up and down on the electric staircase:
And because his mummy wasn’t well, we even got to ride on the airport digger!
(Yes, I wasn’t on the ball with these photos at all!)
We arrived home just in time to pick Lottie up from her holiday resort. Home!