Im not Bullet proof

To get an understanding of why It took me such a long time to get myself in a state to get back to work I feel its necessary to explain in detail the events that lead to me being evacuated from the ship.

This has been something I have wanted to write for a long time but honestly its scared me shitless just thinking about what happened, let alone analysing it in detail.  However, I believe this is integral to my recovery so I feel its time to bite the bullet.  

You have read that I was heavily depressed and not in a good space in the months leading up to my first anxiety attack.  Some other very stressful and equally important things were going on in my life that all came to a head in a short time frame to a point where I just couldn't keep it all under wraps any more, in a very sudden and at the time unexpected turn of events everything unravelled with terrifying consequences.  

The leave before I got sick my wife and I had planned to go on a holiday around NZ. Being the thrift that I was; I opted to buy a converted van to live out of for the holiday, rather than pay practically the same price to hire a flash camper.  This way we would be able to sell the van at the end and get some of the money back.  

After spending a considerable sum of money on a van,  It turned out that the "newly rebuilt engine" was a dud and the seller had done a number on us well and truly.  

We had planned for this trip for a very long time and I absolutely refused to have something like this ruin it.  At a huge additional cost I purchased another engine and replaced the dead one in the van by myself.  The time frame for the trip was short so there was a huge amount of pressure on me to get everything back up and running.  So, In just under two days I managed to completely replace the fucked engine with a new one.  Any Mechanic will know how much of a pain in the ass it is to do this in a van.  It literally requires you to lift the chassis off the engine and remove the gearbox, then the engine, replace and re-install the new engine before putting the gearbox back; lowering the chassis back down.  So 5 weeks at sea, home on Friday, new engine and running van on Monday. 

Two 16 hour days after a long hard trip away and my mind and body were drained.

On reflection.  I realise now, the only person who put the pressure on me to get things up and running was me.  My attitude, although commendable at the time, actually ruined the whole trip.  I was busy thinking that I needed to get it going for the trip and for us.  But to be honest it would have been far less stressful if I had just accepted it and moved on.

We eventually set out on our holiday (nearly a week later than planned), made it as far as Hamilton (about 2 hours away) and the gearbox started playing up. 

the rest of the trip ended up being a stressful combination of trying to nurse the van along and not destroy the gearbox.  We got to about 10 days and it was becoming painfully obvious that the gearbox was on its last legs.  

I had a new box sent to a friends place that had some floor space and a bit of gear and proceeded to rip the broken box out and put the new one in.  The new one didn't fit, so I had a replacement sent that turned out to be a dud too.  I managed to bodgy up a running box out of the 3 I now owned.  we called the rest of the trip off and decided to head home to lick our wounds and count the horrific costs.  on the 3 hour trip home the gearbox properly packed up again.  leaving me and the wife copping a ride home with a tow truck.  A very very stressful end to a very very stressful and expensive trip from which  I should have cut my losses much earlier.

This was the most bitter defeat I have ever tasted.  I always believed that I could get through anything.  That if I kept trying I would always succeed eventually.  This stark realisation that I am not capable of fixing everything really changed my outlook on life and I have been struggling to get past it ever since. 

Not long after getting home I went back to sea again.

Due to the exhaustion from the lack of rest on leave I was drinking large amounts of coffee on board and they were getting progressively stronger as the days went by (I had no less than 3 Very strong black coffees less than 2 hours before the attack).  I was incredibly fit at the time and was hitting the gym harder than I had ever done before.  Up to 90 mins a day six days a week, eating protein shakes etc for breakfast and cutting out salt, fats and most of the other bad shit.  

The day before the attack I was doing some very physical work for a prolonged period of time in the engine room which was somewhere around 50 deg C (125 F).

I'm convinced that these five factors ( the van, the depression, the coffee the exhaustion from the gym and the heat at work) all collided at the same time and both my mind and body couldn't keep up.  So my body shut down.

I remember watching TV in the mess (lunch room) about an hour after watch (on board ships we are manned 24 hours a day and this is what we call a shift),  had just been to the gym and cleaned up.  Finished breakfast and put an episode of Californication on the box.

I'm not sure exactly what happened but at some point during the show I felt like I couldn't catch my breath.  I got up and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge.  Sat back down and tried to resume watching TV.  The feeling didn't go away, so I got up again and walked up to the bridge to have a chat to the guys on watch.  I still had the uncomfortable shortness of breath and couldn't shake it.  While talking to the guys up on the bridge I became dizzy and had that odd feeling of seeing stars.  I remember telling one of the guys I thought I was going to faint.  As he guided me to a chair the heart palpitations started.  I felt like my heart was going to burst through my chest and the guys commented that they could see it pounding through my shirt.  The Captain was called to the bridge and everybody started to really panic.  

I could see in everyone's eyes what they were thinking..... Heart attack. 

Just after I was removed from the ship, The heart monitor tabs still attached

An emergency Dr was contacted by phone and tried to assess me but kept coming back to the same conclusion.  Heart Attack.  

All the crew were now on deck and helping out where they could.  The Dr had one of them taking my pulse frequently, another was massaging the carotid artery in my neck to try and reduce the risk of it blocking up, another was standing behind me trying to make small talk and keep me busy and occupied so I wouldn't get wound up and put undue strain on my heart. 

While I was talking to the Dr, he more or less told me that it sounded very serious.  I think that's when the panic really started to set in.  The realisation that I could very well be staring down the barrel of a gun.  That in a matter of minutes I had gone from being healthy to there being a strong chance that I was about to die.
Thats when the feeling of going over the edge on a roller coaster first kicked in and I found myself in complete free fall into panic.  To be honest Im surprised I didn't piss my pants.  

Its not until something like this happens that you start to realise how isolated you really are when working at sea.  For me it was fortunate that we were so close to port, a transfer boat was dispatched to pick me up and take me to the waiting ambulance.  But that was bad enough.  We were still 1500Km from Perth and in one of the more remote reaches of the western coast.

We all knew what a heart attack meant.  We had no defibrillator on board to re-start my heart and although  close to port it was still a full hour before I was to set foot on land.

All of the officers on board have done some extensive first aid courses and we all know that when a fit 25 year old is having heart attack that the odds are much higher of not pulling through (even more so when you cant get to a hospital).  So it was absolutely terrifying and to a degree almost surreal to be sitting there having all this unfold around me.  It was a horrifying realisation that i'm not going to be here forever.  That even though we joke about death all the time, that it was inevitable and that very possibly the reaper was about to wrap his veil around me.

I have heard people say the idea of meeting your maker can be a humbling experience.  I often wonder if they were on crack at the time because it just plain scared the shit out of me.  This is the crux of the anxiety I suffer and why I have struggled so much going back to sea.  The idea of this happening again absolutely terrifies me.  

As always thanks for hearing me out.