We were supposed to have been on the boat by now, sailing out of Plymouth Sound. Instead we are sat at home waiting for my parents to return from Dereford Hospital in Plymouth.
My parents had arranged for some old friends of theirs to house-sit for them while we were away sailing. They are an elderly couple, and have done the job several times in the past without incident.
They arrived just after lunchtime, and we all sat together chatting around the dinner table when the old man - Jim - suddenly became very vacant and turned white. It’s probably worth poitning out at this point that he is 79 years old, and had triple-bypass surgery some years ago.
It rapidly looked like he was having a heart attack, and everybody seemed to start doing exactly the right thing. I have to say I was impressed with the emergency services down here - within 10 minutes of making the call to the emergency services (who stayed on the phone the entire time with my Mum), first the local doctor on call arrived, then the hospital helicopter.
Myself and W raced down the drive to signal to the helicopter, and they landed in a field across the road (an amazing piece of flying, incidentally - the house is on a hillside).
Shortly after that paramedics arrived and we all got out of the way while they did their work. Well - until they wanted to get Jim to the helicopter, at which point they needed a big strong lad to help carry the stretcher.
I haven’t told the rest of the family yet, but Jim had a cardiac arrest halfway down the driveway (out of view of everybody) - we had to drop him to the ground, and they had the paddles out. It was slightly surreal seeing it “for real”, with the paramedics shouting “CLEAR” as the whine came from the machine… luckily Jim burst back into life, and we got him into the helicopter.
Mum and Dad have taken Jim’s wife to the hospital (about 25 minutes drive away) - I’m really not sure what will happen from here on in. I’ll write more later as we find out more.