Not such a fun day today. When I woke in the morning I felt my heart go bumpity-bump. Not entirely unusual, I've noticed it before on odd occasions but my doctor had always said that's not uncommon, and nothing to be concerned about. I thought I'd try out the ECG app on my Samsung smartwatch, and to my surprise it came back with an alert that it had detected atrial fibrillation. I tried it again and got the same message, but it was normal after that. I decided it was a one-off as I felt 100%, but at lunchtime felt another heart bump, and got another alert.
We thought seeing the doctor might be advisable just in case, but on going there they said I should go to the local public clinic which would be able to do a proper ECG. And thus disappeared our afternoon. Three hours later I had seen a nurse practitioner, had a full ECG and blood test and got the blood results back. I then saw a doctor who assured me that all was showing completely normal, with no signs of any heart problems or damage, but it might be wise to see a cardiologue on our return to NZ. No need for me to do anything different, which was a bit of a relief as yesterday we had booked flights to Sicily!
Overall a long and not unpleasant experience. The staff were all lovely, though somewhat overworked. Just as well my French held up, as there was no sign that anybody could speak English.
On leaving we headed straight to Le Comptoir for a good drink! I feel totally fine, though it was a bit of a reminder that all of us have a limited lifespan, and should get on with life while we can.
From my side of things it was a stressful and rather scary day. This was compounded when, after waiting 1.5 hours at the clinic to find out the results of John's blood test (instead of the 15 minutes they said it would take), John was escorted through the emergency doors and I wasn't allowed to follow. Ten minutes later my brain was imagining all sorts of horrible things - more tests, he'd be staying overnight, bad news was coming... However, when he finally came back out he said he'd had a proper consultation with a doctor to discuss the results, and they do not allow any other person to be present. What a relief when he emerged with a big smile on his face!
