Summary

In 2023, I fell down the stairs, ended up in the hospital, and returned home. I attempted to go back to work but it didn't go as planned. In this section, you'll read about heart failure and all the problems it brings, but also the positive side of the whole experience.

Author,

Bart Horenbeck.

Trailer of this book, part of page 1.

On the night of Saturday, as I stepped out of bed around 5 in the morning to shower because I was sweaty and restless, I suddenly took a heavy fall. I still wonder how that could have happened. It's quite cramped on that small landing, and it gets slippery when you walk barefoot. Dizzy, I spun around and fell from the wooden spiral staircase. I'm certain I was crumpled at the bottom of the landing. With pain everywhere, I crawled back up and, in a daze, turned off the shower tap, which was still running. At that moment, I fell down the stairs again. The next morning, I woke up in the living room, dressed in shorts and completely disoriented. My phone was nowhere to be found; I had given up and thought, "I'll just wait." Fortunately, Susan came by and found me like that. She wanted to take me to the hospital immediately by car, but first she called my daughter. She also came immediately and saw that it was serious. She called an ambulance. "Dad, you've had a heart attack or something," she said. "You also look completely yellow." I could hardly speak and just let everything happen to me.

In the ambulance, I was checked, and they decided that I should go to the hospital just to be safe. Once there, I underwent a series of tests, although I was barely aware. It felt like hours, at least that's how it seemed, while my daughter calmly waited for me on a bench by the door. I lay low on a four-wheeled cart with side rails to prevent me from falling off. At least, that's what I remember in my dreamlike state. Once they had figured out what needed to be done with me, they took me to a ward. There was someone else lying there. Once there, I slipped into delirium, a state of total confusion in my mind and body. It turned out I had acute cholecystitis, and I was prescribed antibiotics. I also received tablets containing significant opiates. I saw black shadows, white walls, and spiders and insects crawling over the walls and windows. They say it's part of it, but it was quite intense. And as if that wasn't enough, I remember that I spent the night replacing all the heating pipes on the ward. I even planned to send an invoice to a contractor.

The antibiotics kicked in, and I slowly began to recover. But going to the toilet independently was a huge challenge; I just let everything happen to me. I also had trouble with eating: in the first week, I ate almost nothing and lost a lot of weight. After a week, I was 15 kg lighter. When I was allowed to get out of bed again, I had to learn to walk again. I discovered that climbing stairs was quite a task; I couldn't find the strength to