Getting Your Tax’s Worth

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Allan Dick after heart surgery

It was the dreams! Vivid, weird, colourful dreams laden with doom and foreboding. The brain is a marvellous piece of engineering and over three consecutive sleeps, my brain managed to keep track of a bizarre storyline where I arrived in a small town in New Zealand to set up a scheme that involved getting rich by promoting chocolate cookies sold in sealed gold foil packaging.

The scheme saw me enlisting the help of the local gang and then me raiding their headquarters alone, driving some sort of vehicle over which I had no steering control and inadvertently ran over the six snarling Rottweilers the gang used to guard their premises. After a one-sided shoot-out, in which my gun wouldn’t fire and all their shots missed me, I was taken prisoner, put on “trial” and condemned to death for the killing of their dogs.

But, just as I was about to be executed I was saved by the arrival of a number of radio and TV personalities I had enlisted to help in my get-rich-quick chocolate cookie scheme. These included the late Tim Bickerstaff, Pam Corkery, Jim Mora, Murray Inglis and others. All were driving extreme hot rod cars. They managed to convince the gang I should live as I was going to be very rich. They released me and I went off to find the vehicle I had abandoned when I was taken prisoner.

The gang had moved it to the car park attached to a shopping centre. It was in the dark, early hours of the morning but some shops were still open, including a shop that sold all sorts of things, including souvenirs. There was a touch of Kings Cross about the place.

Anyway, as I waited to cross the road, a little Ford Anglia went past — driven by my Border Collie sheepdog Kate who I thought had died almost three years ago! I was amazed and even though I called out, Kate refused to stop, but as she did a U-turn I managed to open the door and stopped her. Kate, now a talking as well as driving dog, told me she hadn’t really died — simply run away from home.

I marched her into the souvenir shop and bought a collar and lead off the shopkeeper and, as he was helping me restrain Kate, who wanted to continue driving rather than walking, I saw a well-dressed lady come into the shop and stick a souvenir model of the Auckland Sky City Casino under her coat and walk out without paying.

I alerted the old shopkeeper to this but he appeared powerless to do anything about it, so I tied Kate up and ran out of the shop as the lady was getting into a breakdown truck driven by her husband.

She was from a wealthy part of the small town I was launching my get-rich scheme in and out for a night of fun, riding around in a breakdown truck and shop-lifting.

She confessed but pleaded with me not to do anything and to let her go.  With that, the old shopkeeper arrived and I noticed that he had a limp and also a heavy Bulgarian accent.

I asked where he was from and learned he had escaped from Bulgaria, skiing across the border at the height of winter, but received a bullet wound to a leg when the border police shot him at. He’d made his way to New Zealand where he had struggled financially until he was able to open his small shop.

In a fury, I said to the woman — “You are wealthy and indulged, this man speaks with a heavy Bulgarian accent, limps and works 18 hours a day to support his family and yet you come in, steal his goods and expect not to be charged?”

The old man interrupted — “Should I have her charged, I am not so sure about such matters.” With that I ordered Kate the Border Collie to call the Police who were there in minutes.

As they were bundling the wealthy, shoplifting socialites away, another car arrived — it was driven by the Navigator (my wife) who had driven from Auckland to check on progress on the get-rich quick scheme.

I told her that I reckoned it was a goer and that if we invested right at the start, we would make $35 million dollars in six months.

Then a voice intruded on my dream — “Mr Dick, Mr Dick — you’re having a dream. Time for your medication.”

It all started two and a bit years ago when, after a stressful week getting a magazine together I felt a tightening in my chest. I added it up — a family heritage of heart trouble, knocking on seventy years of age, fond of pies, cheese, beer and not so fond on jogging, running the marathon or too much else in the way of exercise. Add in a spare tire around my middle and I knew I was a candidate for the biggest killer in New Zealand — heart disease.

My doctor sent me to a cardiologist where I failed the treadmill test miserably. She immediately put me on a cocktail of blood pressure, anti-cholesterol and blood thinning drugs — all of which I had previously declined when my doctor had gently tried to guide me onto them as a precaution.

I got into the Auckland public heath system and a cardiogram showed that I had blocked arteries! Too bad for stents, but not bad enough for surgery.

They would manage me with drugs until surgery became an option!

But then, I moved from Auckland to Oamaru and sort of fell between the cracks as far as being a watched candidate for surgery.

My doctor in Oamaru managed my health and the pile of drugs I took increased each six months. But everything seemed to be OK.  Apart from feeling half-doped on some of the drugs, I was still functioning and I never used the little orange spray I had been given for angina attacks.

In early May this year I took a two week trip around the North Island, researching material for NZ TODAY magazine and this included a week in a campervan, staying in some pretty remote locations. I was travelling by myself and over the week in the campervan I was aware that my energy levels were getting lower and lower. In motorcar terms — I was running out of fuel.

There were a couple of times that I was so remote I wondered if it was wise considering everything.

But I survived, had a great trip, got lots of great photographs, some fabulous stories for NZ TODAY and arrived home with a magazine deadline looming.

Between writing stories, I fitted in a visit to the doctor who immediately started me on the path to getting specialist attention under the public health system. This meant I was right back to where I was in Auckland when I had first felt that things weren’t right and I was going to have a treadmill/fitness test.

But before that could happen I went to bed on Friday night and got woken at 5.00am on Saturday morning with a pain in my chest. I turned over and went back to sleep, but one hour later there was another explosion of pain — longer and more intense, accompanied by a clammy feeling. The Navigator woke, got alarmed, phoned the ambulance and twenty minutes later I was in Oamaru Hospital on a monitor.

Two blood tests later it was decided that I had had a mild heart attack, but I was now back in the system and the doctors booked me a space at Dunedin Hospital Heart and Thoracic Unit. There wasn’t a bed available until Thursday and until then I was bed-ridden, monitored and fussed over. The Oamaru Hospital macaroni cheese and meat loaf with gravy is superb and food fit for a king!

I was taken by ambulance to Dunedin on Thursday and by mid-afternoon it was decided that with nine blocked arteries I was in immediate need of surgery.

A week in hospital and the following Thursday saw me in the theatre and into the esoteric and previously unknown world of open-heart surgery where miracles are performed by people wearing high-powered binocular spectacles and with hands as steady as the European Continent.

I knew nothing about it at the time, but the team that opened my chest with a small circular saw, prized the opening apart, shifted my lungs out of the way so that surgeon Ivor Galvin could get his hands on my heart, included people from Brunei, Ireland, China and New Zealand. Mister Galvin himself is as Irish as Guinness and he oversaw what ended up being a triple bypass, using more than a metre of artery harvested in a single length from the inside of my left leg!

The night before, the nurses had suggested I visit the Intensive Care Unit where I would wake up after surgery. I didn’t think would make any difference as I wasn’t going to go anywhere, but I wish I had. The awakening is like being reborn, but as an adult, not a baby. I found the surroundings scary and intimidating and I fell instantly in love with the first human being I saw — a pretty Irish nurse. I promptly yelled, “I love you!”

“But you’ve only just met me,” she replied.

And then I had to explain to the second human being I saw — the Navigator — that I didn’t mean I loved the nurse in “that way”. The Navigator smiled and said she understood.

The weird, whacky and always slightly scary dreams followed — probably a result of the powerful anaesthetics used to keep you in such a deep and painless state while they perform what is really quite extreme surgery.

A day in Intensive Care and then you are transferred to a recovery ward where you sit and sleep in an Laz-E-Boy armchair and keep yourself topped up on Paracetamol.

Quite quickly you are into an exercise routine of coughing, breathing and then slowly, walking. And then, on Tuesday, five days after the operation I was in the passenger’s seat, being driven home to Oamaru where I find myself making a surprisingly quick recovery. I say surprisingly, because the first two or three days after the event you feel awful. So awful that you doubt that you will ever come right.

I’m told I’m not lift anything heavier than a carton of milk for six weeks, not to work for six or seven weeks, not to drive a car for four to six weeks and so on.

Unlike eight years ago when I donated a kidney to a friend, this time I am being monitored with visits from the District Nurse, an encouragement to join the heart recovery programme operated by Oamaru Hospital and two visits to specialists back in Dunedin.

Well, here we are now, two weeks to the day since Mr Galvin and his team dismantled my torso and stitched in transplanted arteries that were only about 1.5 millimetres in diameter. So, how do I feel?

There was a minor hiccup — I had three days back in Oamaru Hospital on a monitor after some not unexpected irregular beating of my heart. That is now stable and I feel the best I have felt in more than two ears.

Since the problem was first diagnosed just over two years ago I have felt as though my head has been in a cloud. Low levels of energy and a slowness of the mind. Today I am far sharper mentally than I have been for many months — I am not sure if that’s because more blood is flowing around my body or my daily intake of drugs is lower than previously. I feel good.

There’s still some pain and discomfort and I still have to sleep on my back — something I don’t find easy. The dreams are easing — but last night I had another beauty that I may turn into a book and sell the movie rights.

I’ve been lucky and been handed another 15 to 20 years of useable life — providing I do things the right way. So, I’m de-stressing, losing weight and going to go on the regular rambles around Oamaru undertaken by the Navigator and Judith our neighbour.

One last question. Why did it happen? I am far from an expert, but I suspect that my family heritage is largely responsible, aided and abetted by an ignoring of the warning signs, a refusal to listen to my Auckland doctor and carrying too much weight.

I was lucky as the heart attack was so mild it did no damage to my heart, but I was also lucky in that it happened when it did — I was almost put of gas. Maybe another week or two before the big one.

I would hazard a guess that the total bill so far for what I have received would be in the order of $150,000 – $200,000. It’s called getting your tax’s worth and I am obviously very, very greatful to a public health service that, when you are in it, works so bloody well.

I am not sure that I should be sitting here writing this at this stage, but I feel so good that I just felt a need to share it.