Ed Thexton’s friends got the Himalayas, he got a different adventure.
By Ed Thexton
IT’S six months to the day since I had open heart surgery at The Alfred Hospital. Until the triple bypass my last stay in an Australian hospital was the Yarra Junction Bush Nursing Hospital, when I was born. I also had a week’s sojourn in Scotland at the Royal Dundee Infirmary in the early 1980s after substituting my nose for a bicycle brake in the highland town of Blairgowrie, but I was fit, young and adventurous so it hardly counts.
IT’S six months to the day since I had open heart surgery at The Alfred Hospital. Until the triple bypass my last stay in an Australian hospital was the Yarra Junction Bush Nursing Hospital, when I was born. I also had a week’s sojourn in Scotland at the Royal Dundee Infirmary in the early 1980s after substituting my nose for a bicycle brake in the highland town of Blairgowrie, but I was fit, young and adventurous so it hardly counts.
I learnt a lot at The Alfred, principally that hospitals are not a place for sleep, operation schedules are aspirational and the intensive care unit is to be avoided. The Alfred is the best, apparently, and as operations go open heart surgery is common. The use of wire to join up the sternum again makes it a bit agricultural to my mind.
About four months before the operation, I was diagnosed with sleep apnoea and had been trying a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine, on hire. I took it to The Alfred. There they gave me a prescription for a new $1800 CPAP machine for $80. The intermittent failure to breathe of sleep apnoea doesn’t just wreck your sleep it strains the heart, and my repaired unit didn’t need any more strain.
The operation, I realise in retrospect, was the first time that I have been pulled up, I mean really pulled up. Until six months ago, I’d never really had a Stop! Wrong Way! Go Back! imposed upon me.
By some perverse delusion pre-operation, I thought and may have referred to myself as a country boy. I am a boy no more and have the scars to prove it. Previously people would say it was my father or grandmother who had one of these operations. Now I’m one of them. I’ve crossed the Rubicon.
What started all this was that last November I was going to Annapurna Base Camp in the Nepalese Himalayas with my son and three other locals to celebrate the end of his secondary education. It was an almost casual enquiry about heart health testing by one of them that started it off. No heart attack, no symptoms at all. But my father died at 53 and my brother had a quintuple bypass so there’s a bit of family history there.
The penultimate test was an angiogram. I was presented with the diagnosis before I got off the trolley: “Whoever told you to get tested has saved your life … You’re not going to Nepal.” They got the Himalayas, I got a different adventure.
At the Wonthaggi Hospital rehabilitation program I was asked for my overwhelming thought and feeling of the experience. My one-word response: “Lucky”.
Principally, of course, for not having had the pressure of altitude and exertion on a Nepalese track bring my heart function to an untimely end, but mainly because I am Australian, with the excellence of our health system behind me. Google suggests that such a procedure costs between $40,000 and $55,000. Medicare paid for it all. It cost me $0.
Thank you, Gough Whitlam, for bringing it in and thank you, Labor, for defending it. We have it good, people. Please be careful with that vote.
Remember, like me, you may not know of anything that is wrong, but as you get older you can bet that something is cooking inside you. As the surgeon said to me “This has been coming for a long time.”
It has taken time but by degrees my life, my body health, has been made to shift by the near daily routine of walking and gym. Those who know me will tell you that I’ve barely a routinised bone in my body. I could never have accrued the incremental gains without friends who are there every day to walk with me. I am eternally grateful for the companionship.
I have also forsaken my yes addiction and am withdrawing from other things that interfere with my physical and mental well being. Everything must now fit around my need to rebuild and it feels good. Effectively, it has also retired me.
I know one thing – there’s an awful lot of good living still to do. This November we are going back to the Himalayas, this time to Everest Base Camp.
About four months before the operation, I was diagnosed with sleep apnoea and had been trying a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine, on hire. I took it to The Alfred. There they gave me a prescription for a new $1800 CPAP machine for $80. The intermittent failure to breathe of sleep apnoea doesn’t just wreck your sleep it strains the heart, and my repaired unit didn’t need any more strain.
The operation, I realise in retrospect, was the first time that I have been pulled up, I mean really pulled up. Until six months ago, I’d never really had a Stop! Wrong Way! Go Back! imposed upon me.
By some perverse delusion pre-operation, I thought and may have referred to myself as a country boy. I am a boy no more and have the scars to prove it. Previously people would say it was my father or grandmother who had one of these operations. Now I’m one of them. I’ve crossed the Rubicon.
What started all this was that last November I was going to Annapurna Base Camp in the Nepalese Himalayas with my son and three other locals to celebrate the end of his secondary education. It was an almost casual enquiry about heart health testing by one of them that started it off. No heart attack, no symptoms at all. But my father died at 53 and my brother had a quintuple bypass so there’s a bit of family history there.
The penultimate test was an angiogram. I was presented with the diagnosis before I got off the trolley: “Whoever told you to get tested has saved your life … You’re not going to Nepal.” They got the Himalayas, I got a different adventure.
At the Wonthaggi Hospital rehabilitation program I was asked for my overwhelming thought and feeling of the experience. My one-word response: “Lucky”.
Principally, of course, for not having had the pressure of altitude and exertion on a Nepalese track bring my heart function to an untimely end, but mainly because I am Australian, with the excellence of our health system behind me. Google suggests that such a procedure costs between $40,000 and $55,000. Medicare paid for it all. It cost me $0.
Thank you, Gough Whitlam, for bringing it in and thank you, Labor, for defending it. We have it good, people. Please be careful with that vote.
Remember, like me, you may not know of anything that is wrong, but as you get older you can bet that something is cooking inside you. As the surgeon said to me “This has been coming for a long time.”
It has taken time but by degrees my life, my body health, has been made to shift by the near daily routine of walking and gym. Those who know me will tell you that I’ve barely a routinised bone in my body. I could never have accrued the incremental gains without friends who are there every day to walk with me. I am eternally grateful for the companionship.
I have also forsaken my yes addiction and am withdrawing from other things that interfere with my physical and mental well being. Everything must now fit around my need to rebuild and it feels good. Effectively, it has also retired me.
I know one thing – there’s an awful lot of good living still to do. This November we are going back to the Himalayas, this time to Everest Base Camp.