If you watch programmes like 24 Hours in A&E then no doubt you’ve found yourself thinking what you would do if placed into similar scenarios, particularly if it was a close family member in a life threatening situation.

So it came as somewhat of a shock to find my own life threatened just over a month into 2015 and a couple of years before I’ve managed to reach at least my fiftieth birthday.

Obviously it’s only with the benefit of  hindsight that you come to understand the level of threat involved and I am sitting here now a week on from the original incident feeling very grateful I live at this time and place and for a succession of lovely people who did their respective jobs efficiently and effectively.

Anyway, in retrospect there were some warning signs during the previous few days before the fateful morning – an abnormal shortness of breath, particularly when going up stairs but put down to a cold bug that’s been going around the family.

On this morning it was a lot worse prompting me to call the local surgery in hope of a quick appointment. As luck would have it there was a virtually immediate slot available but I needed to get there within 15 minutes. It was during those frantic few minutes of getting ready to go out that I was a few short breaths away from asking my wife to call for a paramedic and it was also very clear that what I was experiencing was far from normal and that I was very much in unknown territory.

The first indication of what the problem was came from the triage nurse who confirmed that my airways and lungs sounded clear of any infection or obstruction and therefore suspicion fell on heart function and the passage of oxygen from lungs to heart and body,

I sensed concern when the print-out whirred out of the ECG machine and the nurse indicated that the readings showed heart issues. At this point things took a much more serious tone and I was told I needed to get to Accident & Emergency without delay and that an ambulance could be arranged if needed.

Again, in retrospect this would have been a good idea but instead I remember saying to my wife that if I walked down from the hospital car park to the A&E reception and collapsed in the doorway, then they’d have to deal with me quickly – a few more steps and that probably would have happened as it turned out to be the hardest walk of my life with me having to stop every few steps to get sufficient air into my lungs.

As it was, the letter from the surgery ensured very swift passage to the assessment bay where the previous tests were repeated – after which I was put immediately in another assessment bay in the main A&E area.

Questions and examination from the cardiac team tried to establish if what I’d been experiencing was a heart attack, meanwhile an alarm from one of the monitors had a nurse setting up an oxygen line as my natural saturation levels were below normal. Armed with a portable oxygen tank I was wheeled into emergency X-ray whereupon the resulting image confirmed 100% that my lungs were clear of any infection or fluid.

More questions and examinations from another senior doctor led to more blood being taken from my arm and I soon discovered it was the results from this test that determined whether I would be discharged there and then or be admitted to hospital for the first – and hopefully last -time in my life.

Amongst a growing collection of new terms I was hearing that fateful morning was a blood test for my ‘D-dimer’ level. I later learned that this was designed to identify a protein in the blood that is generated when a blood clot breaks free. A normal D-dimer result is around 500 – mine was 2,713.

At that point all suspicion now fell on there being blood clots in my lungs or a ‘pulmonary embolism’ to give it the correct medical term. To stop any further clotting I was given an injection of heparin into my abdomen – not pleasant – and within 30 minutes I was being wheeled on the A&E trolley around the corridors to the Acute Medical Unit (AMU), transferred to a bed and reconnected to oxygen and monitors.

The AMU is one of the newer parts of Southampton General Hospital and a hive of activity. The first thing that hits you is the noise. Alarms and buzzers going off in all directions and the wails of other patients who are distressed and needing help.

After about an hour of settling in to AMU a wheelchair and porter arrived to take me for a CT scan. It was strange being pushed around the corridors by another person but I knew from my experiences in trying to walk into A&E a few hours earlier that I simply could not rely on my own body to get me around at this point in time and so I just had to accept this new found and unnerving dependance on someone else. I didn’t like the feelings it generated but had no choice but to sit there and watch the able bodied dart around me in all directions as we headed for the radiology department.

I sat in the wheelchair in a bay opposite one of the CT scanner rooms and watched several patients go in and out before it was my turn. It’s at times like these you see first hand where some of the big money is spent in the NHS as these futuristic looking machines can cost well over £1 million a piece. Once inside the big doughnut hole with the scanner whirring around me I was told to expect a ‘warm injection’ as they pumped contrast dye into my veins through the line in my arm that had been installed on my arrival earlier in A&E. Sure enough it did indeed feel like I’d wet myself – as warned I would – as the dye entered my nether regions.

Once wheeled back to AMU, my wife and I whiled away a couple of hours waiting to hear the verdict. It was around 6pm when a smartly dressed young consultant approached my bed and drew the curtains around it. The CT scan had, as suspected, showed a large amount of clotting in both lungs, the net result of which had put a significant load on my heart as it tried in vain to pump blood to get oxygen into my body. Given this situation I would now be kept in the Acute Medical Unit for monitoring and ongoing blood thinning treatment until my heart and lung function stabilised. The bottom line is that I was looking at a minimum stay of 5 days – not good news when you run your own business and have clients to keep happy.

As my wife also runs her own business and we have two daughters to look after, the time had come for her to head home and leave me to face my first ever night in hospital.

Now, there aren’t many occasions in my life so far when I have felt pleased to be deaf but with the noise levels in this part of the hospital it was a relief to remove my hearing aids. Normally this would have ensured a relatively peaceful night in my virtually natural silent world but this being the ‘Acute’ Medical Unit there would be no such peace that night. Firstly, the curtains I had pulled around my bed to cocoon myself from the alien surroundings were opened up fully as the nursing staff on the night shift needed to see their allotted patients and any accompanying monitors. Secondly, my blood pressure and temperature had to be checked every couple of hours meaning that even if I did fall into a deep sleep I would woken abruptly from it to have my arm wrapped in a band and squeezed tightly.