What kind of attack?
05 February 2018 | Bonaire
We upped anchor at early o'clock. To the East, yellows and oranges seemed to burst into the sky just as the sun ☀️ peeped its head up over the hills, just as it came light in Martinique. Within a few short minutes we were sailing ⛵️ together for the first time, and we are headed for Bonaire. The Caribbean Sea 🌊 is a beautiful azure blue when you look down into it, it was calling me to just dive in, but alas we now had somewhere to go.
On the morning of our 2nd day of sailing ⛵️, I had a very bad feeling, well not exactly a very bad feeling, but a bad stabbing pain in my chest and pins & needles, in my fingers. I also had a shortness of breath and panting. Now to say I was worried 😟 is an understatement, I was bricking it. When I told the skipper he didn't seem too bothered 😕, well I pushed on as best as I could, and hoped that the symptoms would go away. It pretty much stopped me dead 💀 in my tracks, everything I did was a total effort and 💯 times more difficult to do. I was not too sure if the skipper entirely believed me just by his lack of concern, this went on through both the rest of the day and night. When I got up after a very restless 😬 night, I could see land which meant to get the boat ⛵️ready to approach the anchorage and get the sails down. I still had absolutely no energy at all, but the job needed doing, so I got one with it as best I could ( I'm not too sure how much help I was) When we got to immigration I asked where I could find the doctors, at this point the skipper said he would meet me back at the dingy 😳.
The hospital was only 600 metres away but it took me almost 20 minutes (I had a young lad on a push bike show me the way as if he was looking after me (very kind I thought)). ) Pretty much as soon as the hospital staff saw me they had me in a wheelchair, then rushed in to a room where I had 8 doctors and nurses wiring me up to an ECG machine, I had the nitroglycerin spray under my tongue 👅 and hooked up to two drips in my left arm. After about 30 minutes they told me that they didn't think 🤔 I was having a heart attack, but that it could be a pulmonary embolism, they then started to monitor and started me on a short course of drugs. They kept me in for 3 nights and 4 days, I was a very relieved 😅person when they said I could leave, I have to go back in 6 days so that they can check me over. Now I just have to get my insurance to pay 💰 up the almost $5000 for my little stay in hospital.