Mackay – Time for Big Decisions

29 June 2016

 

MacKay Marina has a tidal range of 5-6m

Daily walk

An unusual neighbour!

We made a doctor’s appointment for Mary on Friday morning, and left Dale to continue fitting the water pump without the assistance of his “appie”.

We hired “the Bommadore”, (a shagged out old Holden Commodore, aptly renamed by the Marina), and headed into the Caneland Medical Centre.  At this time, Mary’s erratic heartbeat was almost back to normal, but having listened to Mary’s history and experiences, the doc said that a 24hr monitoring Holter was the next step. This however involved joining a queue at the local hospital.  Once our cruising status was explained, the lovely young Doc managed to pull a few strings, at the Private (Mater) hospital, and Mary had the Holter monitor fitted on the Saturday, and removed on the Sunday.

The 24 hours tested, only included a few hops and skips, and none of the racing which was so alarming. Hopefully, we thought, the condition which triggers the erratic heart beat would be the same, and that the Cardiologist would be able to “read” the cause.

At 6.30am on the Monday, Mary woke up with the heart doing the racing number, so we hired the Bommodore and rushed her through to the doc asap. Once there, she saw the doc, and was rushed through to the treatment room to be hooked up the the ECG. At this point, her heart was beating at 200bpm.  Sadly however, the nursing sister made some error, and instead of saving the data, she managed to lose/delete it! Then by some quirk, Mary’s heart returned to normal, so when they took the next ECG reading, she was 100% OK!

The Sister was embarrassed, and we and the Doc somewhat annoyed, as this was the exact data that the Cardiologist needed to make the diagnosis. Mary was then sent off to have blood tests taken,  as certain liver and thyroid conditions can trigger the problem.

Since then Mary has had no further racing heart situations, and we are waiting for the results of the Holter and blood tests to be assessed and communicated to us. It is now Thursday morning, and we have not heard anything further from either the Cardiologist or the referring Doc. We are hoping that this implies that things are not too serious! The waiting is however very frustrating!

With all these issues, I decided to cancel the Indonesian rally, as we would never make the start in the first place, but more to the point, we had no wish to head off into the unknown without being 100% confident that Mary’s ticker was Ok. At the same time, I have also made the call that this is in fact the end of our Circumnavigation, and that we will NOT be sailing back over the Indian Ocean to RSA.

We have had 7 or 8 years of fantastic cruising , doing things and seeing places we would never have dreamed of when we set out. Health comes first, and it’s the right time to say “enough!”

Meantime, we have some great news! Chris and Steve,  of “Scott Free”, our good friends with whom we have sailed since Grenada, are flying up from Brisbane, to spend a week with us. This will help to take our minds off things while we mark time in the Marina waiting for Mary’s diagnosis and treatment program to begin. Steve’s son is getting married in Italy, and this is really messing up their seasons cruising plans as well, as they will be flying to Italy in 10 days! We have so much to share and catch up on since we were  together last November in Noumea!

And, while scribbling this update, we have just received a call asking us to make an appointment with the referring Doc, which we have done. Time to pack up and find out the news!

Sadly, it was a wasted appointment……all we ascertained was that the bloods were all fine and that Mary should now have an Echocardiogram.

This was done and still nothing abnormal has shown up!