I gather is that they’re working on an antidote but that would be I think that would probably make acceptable to a lot of people to feel that, should there be a situation where, for instance, they need immediate surgery, which is another problem. I had to have an endoscopy a couple of weeks ago for a totally unrelated problem and, because I had to stop the dabigatran for seventy two hours before I could undergo the surgery. And had had that been an emergency operation, it would have been a problem right.

Anything to do with the heart is immensely troubling because it always feels as though it’s a matter of life and death because it is, in a way. I mean I can’t remember now which consultant it was but a consultant here in [city] once said to me that he had had a bout of AF and he now realised how utterly terrifying it can be and it had made him feel quite differently towards patients. Because I would imagine they see someone with a healthy heart comes in, it’s beating irregularly but there’s nothing else wrong with it, so what are you worried about? You’re fine. But once he had experienced this for himself, he could understand how terrifying it is and it is quite difficult to get that across to somebody who hasn’t had it.

I mean in those days people didn’t talk about this. There wasn’t anybody I could ask about it. I remember my GP, [coughs] who was a very nice and sympathetic man but not one to talk about feelings, coming to see me once because I spent quite a lot of time in bed to start with. And coming with a whole armful of books and jumping, dropping them on my bed and with pieces of paper marking passages and said, Read these and then you’ll know as much as I do.

And also sitting on my bed and explaining that we all had to die of something and it was likelihood it would either be cancer, a stroke or a heart something and really, if you added these three up maybe a heart thing was, [laughs]. It wasn’t exactly reassuring but I think he meant to be reassuring.

I mean the things that he brought me were these massive great text books [laughs] that nobody in their right mind would want to read.

I used to try and, in fact, what I didn’t say, which was quite a feature of the early my early days with AF, that I had the kind of feeling that I could control it if only I did it better. So from time to time, I would stop all the medication, just like that. I can manage this. I can I can deal with this, I would say to myself. I’m all right. I don’t need it. And then, well, I don’t know how long but then it would all start up again and I’d realise that actually it wasn’t within my control. It kind of felt as though it was but it wasn’t.

I don’t like being on the beta-blocker very much and it’s all right at the amount I’m on now and I take it at night to minimise the effect on, because I don’t like that kind of glass wall that beta-blockers put between you and the rest of the world.

In what way? How do they, what do you mean by that?

Well, a friend of mine, who used to take them for, when he was facing stressful situations, he called them, don’t care a damn pills’ and that’s what it’s like. It’s as if you’re detached from. From life and I don’t like that. I’d rather feel.

I have, because I’ve been in AF, I’ve had AF for such a long time, since I was thirty, for a very long time, there’s been a pressure on me to go onto warfarin, which I did not want to do, mainly for quality of life, the fact that you have to, you know, are constantly having blood tests to make sure that all is well. And so I kept on saying, All right, I’ll do it when I’m sixty. Or, I’ll do it when I’m sixty five, I’ll. And I went on and on like this, putting off the decision being persuaded by not just the consultants at the cardiology unit but also by my daughters, who are doctors, that my risk of stroke, etcetera, etcetera, that I ought to be on a more effective blood thinner than aspirin. And I, finally, because, eventually, they have produced a blood thinner, which is not warfarin, that’s dabigatran, I finally agreed last, I think it was some time last autumn that I would go onto dabigatran.

And the advantage of taking a blood thinner, as opposed to not taking one at all, I suppose are that the older you get, the more likely, in AF, of your risk of stroke and that is that is quite a, you know, that is quite a serious risk anyway because, obviously, your risk goes up as you get older. So yeah, I mean I can see that it was sensible to go onto it.

Just this awful, I don’t know, feeling that your heart, it sort of almost feels as if it’s far too big for your chest. And it’s making this terrible, terrible and it’s very frightening. I mean the phrase cardiac neurosis comes to mind because you really do think you’re going to die. It’s horrid. You know, I would say to anyone who’s starting out with AF, it will feel horrible. It will feel really scary.

I suppose I get used to it in the way that anyone who had a false leg or a, they’d be used to it but, at the same time, they’d know it was there wouldn’t they. I am used to it, yes, because I’ve had it for so long but I know it’s there. And sometimes it makes me start to cough because I, there’s this funny sensation as if there’s a lump there or an obstruction and so you want to cough and get it out of the way. But it isn’t an obstruction. It’s your own heart misbehaving.

Well, I mean I suppose I do think about the risk of stroke, yes And I do sometimes think that, you know, the faster a creature’s heart beats, the shorter its life and I do sometimes think, well, mine has been beating very fast for a long time. So has that shortened my life? But that’s a question I have not been able to find an answer to and I’d quite like one.