Curious day today. It didn’t really go as planned.

Last week I’d noticed a bit of chest pain when exercising. Nothing massive, just a niggle that would come on after about five minutes running and would ease off after about ten. I didn’t mention it to anyone because it wasn’t that big a deal, but after it happened a couple of times, I made an appointment to see the doctor – which was this morning.

I probably ought to say this at the start… I’m FINE! (ish) The doctor was cool and reassuring and was adamant that it was very probably something nearly negligible. But when one presents themselves at a doctor’s complaining of chest pains they have to take it seriously.

So, having said that, I ended up at the surgery for quite a bit longer than planned. The doctor did an ECG while I was there and then another consultation to go through the results. I’ve had an ECG before, so I knew the drill – but that was in a hospital. When it’s done in the surgery, they have a box that sends the scan results down the phone. I heard the familiar sound of an old modem, and then a much slower set of tone changes. When I peeked around the curtain the box making the noise was placed on the desk next to the telephone receiver. No acoustic coupler, no modem, nothing. I was petrified that if I made the slightest noise it might suddenly report that I’d had some terrible coronary trauma.

When I asked the nurse what the hospital had said, she told me that she didn’t really understand these things, but that it was showing a level one heart block. Yikes! That sounds really bad… I expected the nurse to rush over, mop my brow and ask if I had any last wishes. She didn’t. Which I took as a good sign.

Some quick googling reassured me that I’m not going to keel over anytime soon .

The doctor was lovely. He went into an explanation of how the heart works and all the electrical stuff that makes it tick; and that a block just means that the electrical impulse isn’t timed quite right and the heart doesn’t fire quite right. He concluded with “it’s basically ok, but I’ve got to refer you”… “and,” he said, “you can’t do any more exercise until all the tests have been completed”.

Bugger!

I was supposed to start my 10k training plan today, and I was then going to blog about how I start off doing light slow runs and how it was going to be awesome, and easy to start, and fun to stick to a programme again. Now I can’t lift anything heavier than a block of lard or a pint of beer (not quite how he worded it). I’m limited to light walks. Yay. Probably only after I’ve had my asprin.

So I’m referred to a chest pain clinic sometime in the next couple of weeks and in the meantime my exercise is limited to walking. Which is cool, because that’s one of my goals in the lift app – well, you’ve got to look at the bright side.

That would be fine if it was the only thing that had happened today, but no. When I was on FaceTime to my parents explaining what had happened – and reassuring them that everything was alright – the phone rang. It was the school calling to say that Joel had fainted and could I go over to pick him up. Well, of course. I was around there in a flash.

He was sat on the floor in an office surrounded by three members of staff who had been looking after him. The poor soul was looking quite pale and clearly hadn’t been right. He told me that he had been dizzy and had then informed a member of staff that he wasn’t feeling well, but from other reports (mainly children later in the day), he’d fainted.

Off we went to the walk-in centre at the hospital to have him checked out by one of the nurses.

They were lovely with him. We didn’t have to wait too long – about ten minutes, and they checked him over for blood pressure, pulse, blood sugar and temperature. He was fine, but I’d mentioned that he’d fainted last year at church parade, and so the nurse said that I should take him to see the GP because they might want to do an ECG on him. Nothing definite, but sometimes dizziness and fainting can come from the heart not firing quite right.

Which is my thing. Not Joel’s.

As it turns out, after talking to my parents, it’s also my Dad’s thing. So there might be something in it, but obviously all this needs testing. Also, my Dad has just turned 70. So if it really is a thing, it’s not that bad.

So I brought him home, sorted the sofa out as a bed, made drinks and did the usual parent-looking-after-child stuff. All good. Then I picked up Lily from school and had lots of people asking after Joel and Jude – who, you may remember, is off in Africa doing awesome things there for a few weeks.

As luck would have it, we had arranged to have a Skype call at the end of the day, given that we hadn’t had a chance to speak since she left at the start of last week. And this, dear reader, is how we get to the nub of this blog post’s title.

Our conversation started out ok. Jude’s doing brilliant work out there (did I mention that already?), and the weather has turned to rain so it’s going to be mud everywhere tomorrow. They’re all staying in a tent, and given that Jude refused ever to go to Glastonbury again because of the mud, it’s not going to be top fun tomorrow.

The children bounced around and tested the bandwidth to a tent 6,600 miles away. Joel said that he’d fainted and I went on to explain. Then after the children had left, I mentioned about the nurse suggesting the ECG. Then I mentioned about my time at the surgery and what the doctor had said… And then the bandwidth gave up. Just at the important face to face bit. The bit where I say “it’s fine, Joel is fine, I’m fine, but you needed to know because you’d notice the lack of exercise on the blog, or someone might ask about Joel on Facebook”. Just at that bit, the bandwidth gave up, and we were left with iMessage.

We conversed by text for about another 20 minutes or so, and I hope that I was able to reassure her. (Jude, I know you’re reading this and by now I hope that you’re reassured!). But for a few minutes it must have been awful for her, which I feel very bad about indeed.

I had considered it a lot before telling her, but I thought that because of the many different ways that we all keep in touch, that something might get back to her one way or another, and so it was best to just let her know. But I still feel awful, because it was really upsetting for a moment. I think she’s fine now, though. Well, I hope…

I got the children to bed early. Joel had a bath, then tucked in and got a story. So plenty of non-xbox time before bed. Lily was tucked up shortly after.

I looked at my lift app which was telling me that I hadn’t had my daily walk today. Well, it had been quite an unusual day. I hadn’t wanted to walk to school and leave Joel at home when he might not be well, and there weren’t many other opportunities. So I pulled on my trainers, set the treadmill to “old man shuffle” miles per hour and walked for 30 minutes.