Rarely do my comments haunt me like this.

I stayed up late, enjoying some apricot brandy from Hungary last night, and filling in the '7 things' questionnaire. One of my '7 things before I die' was to hold my natural grandchildren.

At 6 am this morning I was wondering if that would happen.

Ben came home from work yesterday with a high temperature and a headache, feeling pretty rough. Went to bed but didn't sleep well. Some time before 6 he woke with a crushing chest pain and cold sweating, came down and woke us. It was bad enough to double him up, even when being sick.

Everything here said 'HEART PROBLEM' in 10ft high letters of fire, and we dressed and rushed to the Horton hospital A&E. We were taken seriously, and he was quickly admitted and ECG'd, then ECG'd again. His trace was quite seriously abnormal, and blood samples showed raised enzymes indicative of heart damage. He was given brufen, Asprin another un-named drug and nitroglycerin, while at the same time put on Oxygen. His heart showed mild arrythmic behaviour, and a 3rd ECG was again quite abnormal. Eventually he had a chest X-ray and was moved to the Medical Assessment Unit (MAU) where he eventually recovered. He's being kept in overnight for observation.

After Chris came home to collect a change of clothes, books and food for him they came round with an ultrasound scanner and checked his heart over. Apparently his aortic ventricle is bicuspid, rather than the standard tricuspid issue. Not the cause of the problem though. They also noticed some fluid around the heart, and have concluded the cause is pericarditis due to a viral infection.

I have a feeling this has originated downstairs. We will be praying more carefully to cover our family in the coming weeks. I'm just grateful that no real harm has been done, and that we've only been mildly inconvenienced. This could have been so bad if it had happened while I was in the US.

Thank you Father, for looking after us.