Saturday, September 20, 2008

Don't Panic!

...That great rallying cry to alarm of our very own and much cherished Corporal Jones [see 'Dads Army' passim] only passed his lips, of course, when he was in a very deep blue funk; not of fear as such - for he would yet have charged a Nazi tank with a British broom handle if necessary - but as an air-raid siren to warn all and sundry that something very nasty was imminently afoot.

So did I panic today when dear E cried out in tears and agony to her doting Papa that she was showing all and every sign of a heart attack as we pulled into some horse show? Actually it was not she who signed the thing specific. She merely described the symptoms - acute chest pains, inability to breathe properly and tingling all down her arm. Plus body rent by spasms that no parent ever wants to observe in a beloved child.

Oh and clammy too to the feel. That last at the insistence of the terribly calm lady at Ambulance Central - or howsoever titled - who smartly asked to be so advised. Serious from the start of the call, I could tell from the urgent tone of her voice that as soon as the "Yes very clammy" phrase was half out of my lips she'd hit the red button.

"We have a First Responder who will be with you in minutes. An ambulance will follow shortly thereafter and may even arrive before the air ambulance lands." In the end it was a tie. The paramedic vehicle pulled in just as the helicopter was circling for its rapid descent.

That I am sitting here tonight so very calmly posting this note is perhaps clue enough that all is well that has ended well. The diagnosis given on the spot was a panic not a heart attack. A much welcomed, of course, and half-assumed at the time alternative explanation of what was unfolding.

E, as all riders about to compete, does get nervous and roused. General and clear signals of such pressures and stresses are loud swearing and cursing. At the horse often, at her dear Mama and Papa always. We the parents - and perhaps too the horse - don't much care to be so roundly abused, but we take it - as indeed does the horse - in good if battered spirits. (A sort of equestrian equivalent of "You cannot be serious!" as performed by dear young Mr McEnroe those many years ago.)

Oddly enough, as she later described the events, E had not been feeling consciously anxious about the impending show though indeed it was to have been one pretty significant qualifier for a regional, possibly national event. "I was just reading NME [ah how the years slip away!] when it started out of the blue."

She didn't panic as such it seems but she was very scared. That I can well imagine. When the body starts so misbehaving that way for no discernible reason it can only be terribly frightening.

Everybody was wonderfully supportive and helpful it has to be said. "Not a well puppy" were the kindly words of the on-site First Aider - whose show it was and whose show indeed had to be suspended whilst the helicopter came and went. (Can't really be having a dressage test running "B to M working trot. At X rider bucks off as horse bolts to sound of descending aircraft!")

Reassurance too from the paramedics in whimsical fashion: "My middle name's Jesus. I've cured you without any medication." Not the first mention of Our Lord's precious name that afternoon I can tell you!

You stand there as parent not panicking but dreading. It cannot happen you pray. You believe. You insist!

It could be happening you do though know. It did happen to a friend of mine some years ago. Her young daughter - a mere mid-twenties - collapsed one day for no clear reason. It was, it terribly transpired, her heart. She had been born with - unknown until that day - a defect called 'Long QT syndrome.'

A genetic - I believe - abnormality of the heart rhythm for which there was only medication once revealed but no cure. The consultant told the mother that her daughter might live a long and normal life. Or not. Emma - for that was her name - woefully got the not. She died within the year.

It has been long since I last pondered this terrible sadness of some twenty years ago. It will be yet a while before I stop remembering.

Did one then in the end panic? Yes and no. It was not panic that decided me to call for an ambulance in the face of uncertainty. No father of any wit or sense can contently rest on the arrogant presumption that fell illness cannot strike his beloved simply because that is what they are - his beloved. There was a binary choice to be made - call or not call. A call was the only call to make then in all the circs. as given.

But did I panic as I waited those long anxious minutes to be told there was no need to be afraid for the very life one holds so completely and utterly dear and precious?

Need you ask or I reply?