A 67-year-old man walks into the gym and says, “Cut!” We all know what happens next. It’s a familiar screenwriting trope. But this is the result for me.

It’s a Friday evening in March. I spent the entire day working from home, interrupted only by lunch with my friend John. I haven’t been to the gym for a while because my shoulders are sore. But I do miss the hustle and bustle of working out. So I go to the gym. It’s the same thing I’ve been doing regularly for nearly 30 years.

result. My shoulders can handle the movement of the cross trainer, so I do a brisk 40 minute workout on the cross trainer. Not an epic session, but good enough for my first session back. Sit down to recover and catch your breath. Then it happens. The first thing you notice is a strange out-of-body feeling, as if you are there and not there at the same time. Not unpleasant at all. As it turns out, I may have gone a little too far.

Then, you will feel a pressure sensation in your chest. pressure. Fuck. what is happening? You can’t be having a heart attack, right? I have no pain in my left arm. So maybe it’s not.

Then the tension moves to the left arm. Is this just my imagination? Did I make this happen? Can I stop it? Stay strong, John. Just breathe.

After about 5 minutes, the pain is just a constant pain. That must be a good sign, right? I walk downstairs and say goodbye to the receptionist. “Have a nice weekend,” she says. Not likely. I headed to my car and drove home, still not understanding what exactly happened. How could a trauma so profound be so common?

After a quick shower, I lay in bed for a few hours waiting for my wife to come home. Am I making a fuss over nothing? Either way, it’s scary. “What do you think?” I ask Jill when she gets home. “I have to go to A&E,” she says. “Just in case.”

Friday night is not the best time to have a heart attack. At St George’s Hospital A&E in south London, there are 15-minute queues to get to the triage desk. The nurse collects my details and enters my symptoms into the system. We sit in her last two chairs in the waiting room. It feels apocalyptic. Most people are trapped in their own world of pain. Some people have scars on their heads. Some moan incessantly. A homeless man wanders around looking for a bag of potato chips. Wait at least 5 hours before seeing a doctor.

After about 20 minutes, my name was called. I will have blood tests to measure levels of troponin, a protein released into the bloodstream during a heart attack, and an electrocardiogram (ECG), which records heart activity. I was taken back to the waiting room.

I lose track of time. At some stage I am called back to the nurses’ station for a second blood test and an EKG. I moved to my bay in the heart of his A&E. I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t think it’s something to look forward to. I’m hooked up to a heart monitor, but every few minutes it cuts off and the gentle beeps turn into a nagging alarm. Apparently this is normal, but it’s not good for your nerves.

Eventually, a doctor will come to see you. She won’t tell me exactly what’s going on. My test results are unknown. But she thinks I most likely had a heart attack. She is going to keep me for further examination. I spent the rest of the night staring anxiously into the exam room, wondering what would happen next. I seem to be at a loss.It’s an emergency, but it’s not an emergency. thatIt’s an emergency.

A few hours later, a nurse moved me to Measure B’s A&E overspill ward. I spent Saturday here, with Jill by my side most of the time. Now, there are other patients to watch. A young woman with chronic asthma. She is an older woman with a great sense of humor. An older man who doesn’t like peeing in a bottle. I don’t blame him. Meanwhile, I’m stuck in bed with a bunch of wires stuck in my chest. Moving is not recommended.

The doctor will come to see you in the late afternoon. Troponin levels have increased. There is no doubt that I had a heart attack. I feel numb. My heart is pounding. I assumed this was a likely diagnosis, but I was hoping it would be something trivial. Now, here’s the kicker: my heart attack was mild. However, a mild heart attack does not necessarily mean mild damage to the heart.

Will this kill me?

I I thought the same thing almost 25 years ago when my father passed away without regaining consciousness from heart bypass surgery. I thought it might be genetic. At the time, this was an abstract idea. We all have to die someday. The three most likely causes of death are heart disease, cancer, and dementia. All I did was narrow this down.

But now it feels like a more immediate reality. My mortality is watching me. I feel like I’m not ready to die. I want more time with Jill. I want to see kids do more great things. I want to write more sketches, finish reading books, and see the Spurs win something again. Oh, I can’t outlive a dog, can I?

It’s a lot to take in. My family and friends are amazing. If love alone could heal, I would have left the hospital long ago. Three local family doctors who found out what had happened contacted him. It’s wonderful and full of peace of mind. They say if you have a heart attack, you made the right choice. Also, I chose the right place to do it. He is two miles from St. George’s, a center of excellence in cardiac medicine. Thankfully, I don’t live in the middle of nowhere.

At midnight, the beds in the ward become vacant. Unfortunately it’s not a cardiac ward, but it’s the best ward they can come up with. Porter drove me to the acute assessment room. Bay E. or eBay. I try to get some sleep, but sometimes I doze off. Too wired. I’m too nervous. Around 6 a.m., a nurse comes around with medicine. Really? Couldn’t it have waited a few more hours? I just went to bed.

Today is Sunday, but not much is happening. I examine my surroundings. There is an old man with dementia across the bay. Another elderly man with his attractive niece is also drained. The compassion and love shown by everyone from the nurses to the doctors to the porters is touching. The NHS may appear creaking at the seams and on the brink of chaos, but its heart is still beating. Me too. I’m watching Spurs on my iPad. Most unusually, they won 4-0, as if they had decided not to give me a hard time for once. thank you.

Another sleepless night ensued. The pain of noise and fear and hunger. I can’t eat the food. Luckily, Jill brings me a sandwich. Early Monday morning, a senior nurse from the cardiac ward came to see me. Her eyes look nervous. She spent years having to tell patients that it wasn’t particularly good news, but I suspect she was unable to give people the reassurance they craved. I couldn’t do her job. She takes some notes, listens to my concerns, and details her likely possible courses of action.

The first step is an angiogram to check the blood supply to the heart. If the surgeon can repair it from there, he or she will do it with angioplasty (using a balloon or stent to open the narrowed or blocked artery). What if you can’t do that? Let’s not go there. One day at a time. got it.I’m trying hard.

“Would you please sign the consent form?” the nurse asks. “I have to say there is a very small risk of death.” Just once, can I do something that might not kill me? Like you, I’ll sign anyway. “Maybe not today,” she says. “Maybe Tuesday. But most likely Wednesday. We need to make you fit in somehow.”

This may become my password during my hospital stay. I couldn’t stand the system when I walked through the door, but somehow the hospital found room to accommodate me.

Waiting two days to find out what’s going on in your mind is not fun in my opinion. Too much time to think. Then, on Monday around 3:30 p.m., I got a call from the cardio department. I had to undergo an angiogram immediately. I feel a growing sense of panic. Why me? Why now? Was I upgraded to the appropriate emergency?

Is this when I die?

TElevator wait times are long here. Two of the four machines are currently out of operation. The first elevator I arrived at was full, but when they saw me being wheeled in by a porter, everyone came down. A simple act of kindness. I feel seen even though I am so vulnerable.

The cardiac catheterization laboratory on the first floor is like another world. No noise. Unmanned. Just a sense of calm. “Why me?” I ask, “Why now?” The nurse smiles. “There was a vacant slot.” That’s amazing. They can use their downtime for a break. But that’s not the case. They instead decide to make other people’s lives better.

The operating room looks like a high-tech movie set. A cannula was inserted into my left wrist and a sedative was added. You can feel your arms relaxing, but only up to the elbows. Have you really given enough? Local anesthesia will be applied to the right hand. It will feel like you are on fire for 3 seconds. Nothing after that.

The procedure will begin. A wire is threaded through an artery in your wrist. I’m going to finish the Tour de Jongh before it reaches my heart. Who would have thought that the body’s arterial system could be used for running in rats? It makes me feel humble.

Is this where I will die?

I Don’t let these thoughts invade you. But they do. Of course it is. Why not? But I don’t feel too anxious about it. They are kind and caring people, but there are worse places to die. The sedatives must be talking.

After about 45 minutes, the surgeon stopped chatting to the team and said to me, “I’m teaching students how to perform surgery.” “You’re born with small blood vessels,” he says. Thank you, Dad. “And one of my arteries is clogged. But I can fix it.” The relief is intense. I’m not going to die. not now. still.

“With a stent?” I ask.

“It’s better than that,” he says. “We’ll give him VIP treatment. The stent will cost him £150 at the hospital. For £1,100, we’ll give him more effective medicine.”

After another 45 minutes, the surgeon declared himself satisfied. Blood flow to his arteries has returned to 100%, up from 40%. I take one last look around as I am wheeled to the day case ward where a bed was found for me. It’s a theater, but mostly I’m looking at the surgical team that saved my life. I won’t forget them.

I was scheduled to stay in the hospital for one more day and had to undergo an echocardiogram to check my heart function, which I had scheduled earlier in my stay. The radiologist says my heart is “good, but not great.” Can I get it back to excellent condition? “Yes.” That’s my homework. You don’t have to quit drinking, drugs, or smoking. We did that decades ago. I need to eat better and exercise more moderately. Start now.

It’s been a week since I came back from the hospital. Every day I feel a little stronger physically and emotionally. While in the hospital, I was in coping mode, trying not to get overwhelmed and surviving minute by minute. Now I have to deal with the emotions. Trust your heart again and learn that it’s okay and that not all pain is fatal. This takes time.

I was very shocked. On the day of my heart attack, I wrote in my diary on Saturday that I was one of the lucky ones. I feel even more so now that I have regained my health through the love of not only family and friends, but also strangers. How easily the outcome could have been different. The NHS can be frustrating at times, telling you to “fix your shoulder” but it has helped me when the chips are down.

St. George’s Church is wonderful despite its chaos. But it doesn’t have to be chaotic. There’s no point in celebrating a success if you don’t value it enough to provide the necessary resources. Then there’s the staff. He must have come into close contact with at least 50 staff members over the course of four days. All but five were black, Asian, or from other European countries. The NHS would collapse without immigrants. What Rishi Sunak should keep in mind if he feels chest pain in Peloton.

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The Fallen New World by John Crace (Guardian Faber Publishing, £16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Shipping charges may apply.