Lucky, Lucky Man

Morning,

My grandfather had a heart attack on Monday. He died three times. He was running for a train to go to a Ramblers meeting (he's a really fit man for his age) and had run up 2 flights of stairs, across a bridge and down 2 flights of stairs. He bought his ticket, sat down on a seat on the platform and keeled over.

Incredibly luckily there was an off duty policewoman and an asian student also on the platform. Someone noticed Dat had collapsed and they both knew first aid and went to help. They did CPR on him for 20 minutes until the ambulance came. He had another heart attack on the platform during the CPR, and another inside the ambulance where they used a defibrillator and brought him back again.

This all happened at 9am. I turned up at the same train station at 10.30am, got my train from the same platform quite happily and went home. There were no signs of anything having happened.

I then had a text from Mam at 3.30pm to say that he'd collapsed and she'd be in touch. Over the next half hour or so she told me what had happened.

He's currently in Coronary Care which is basically intensive care. They're hoping to move him onto a normal ward soon, if not already, as his blood pressure and heart rhythm are stable now. We're waiting for a bed to become available at a larger, specialised hospital. They rushed him to the nearest available one when he collapsed, but it doesn't have the necessary equipment to see whether he needs a stent or a bypass operation. He'll be moved to the larger hospital to have the tests and the operations if needed.

He doesn't remember anything from Monday. The off duty policewoman turned up at the hospital afterwards to return his rucksack which had been left on the platform in all the fuss. It had his car keys etc in it, so when Dat had come around he'd been fussing over it. This incredibly nice, good person went to the hospital and asked around to track him down and return the rucksack. She met Dat and my Auntie who was with him, and they got to say thanks personally to her for saving his life, which is an awesome thing. They are going to try to track down the Asian student to thank as well.

He was very, very, lucky.

xx