Processing through BKK (Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport) was the quickest I have ever known there, and probably by some margin. Whilst I have rarely experienced the sort of delays that I have seen reports of others having to contend with (barring one notable experience from Ha Noi in 2013), this time it was barely 30 minutes from landing to collecting my luggage off of carousel 5. It would seem that one advantage of being on a flight that required a shuttle bus from the plane to the terminal was that (here at least) it dropped us almost at the door of immigration. There was no long walk through the airport before reaching where I had to get to in order to present and get my passport stamped.
I don't know if it was the break from the city, but thankfully I felt more at ease there than I had done back in December and January. One thing that was concerning me a little was a bit of discomfort on the left side of my chest, but given the trauma that it had been subjected to over the last couple of years, I could not be sure if it was anything that I needed to be overly concerned about or not. I had been hankering after a particular smartwatch for a while, so now with these latest developments in mind, I justified the spend. This new purchase I hoped would be able to give me a set of readings I could compare against my aging fitness watch and perhaps help set my mind at rest. The shop assistant gave me a sizable discount of 3000 baht (against the 11990 rrp) and was also good enough to throw an extra strap into the deal.
The readings that the new watch provided me with however did little to settle my nerves.
I decided now to push my return flight to the UK back just a few more weeks. I had allowed for a certain amount of flexibility when booking the trip last October, extending the travel insurance that past that initially scheduled return date, and paying extra for flights that would allow a change without additional fees being incurred. This now gave me a little more time to prepare for the journey and make sure that there wasn't any heightened risk involved before I embarked on the long trip back to somewhere in the UK.
Whilst the process itself wasn't as smooth as would have been ideal (I don't really understand why everything still seemingly requires a traditional international phone line call in 2024) with dropped connections, questionable call quality and (reportedly) a system problem, I was able to get a new departure date confirmed. With this out of the way for now, my attention turned to getting the condition of the heart investigated.
The first two places that came to mind were ones that I had reason to visit previously with regards to health, Bumrungrad hospital and the WellMed clinic. Bumrungrad was somewhere that I registered at in order to to get an x-ray done in 2016, with that registration card still being stowed away safely in my bag in case of emergencies. Online research seemed to suggest however that the heart care services that they offered were more tailored towards care packages and ongoing treatment, which is something I hoped that I wouldn't need. WellMed on the other hand seemed to be more in line with what I was looking for. For only 500 baht (or around £10.80) they would complete an ECG/EKG on me and get a medical professional to look over and interpret the results. I had visited WellMed at the end of 2023 in order to get a simple blood test done on my iron levels, and had found it at the time to be a good professional clinic and easy to get to. I sent an email to enquire if it was something that they would be able to offer me any time soon and received a prompt and polite reply stating that it would be better to make an appointment rather than just turn up, but it was something they could do. I got back in touch and scheduled an appointment for only a couple of days later.
I was due to be seen at 9:30 am, but I decided to leave my hotel a couple of hours before this to give myself an abundance of time to get to the approximate area in a non sweaty state. The day before I had really struggled in the heat, but this morning thankfully despite the temperature already being over 32 degrees, I wasn’t having the same issue. After a fifteen minute walk I then took the MRT (underground) train from Silom to Sukhumvit (Asok) and then walked a short distance to where not only the clinic was located, but also a very conveniently placed Starbucks. I had come her to sit and stay cool for an or so hour before the appointment, to ensure that me and my newly de-fuzzed chest stayed dry and ready to have whatever pads applied that were necessary to get the job done.
The procedure itself didn’t take long, with the only issue being that the bed that I was laid upon not being on that had been constructed with someone of 6 ft 1” in mind. I had to slide down and have my legs dangling off of one end of the bench so that my head could then be positioned with some kind of support at the other. After this and with barely enough time to get my shoelaces tied again, I was sat chatting with the doctor in an adjoining room looking over the results. Luckily the chart showed that nothing going on at that time was untoward. The dull ache that I have had the past weeks was in all likelihood something muscular (I didn’t realise that I had any any of those), whilst the sharper stabbing pains were probably down to the internal wiring catching once again. The latter is something that I have gotten used to in the most part and not anything that causes too much discomfort. It is more of a brief "hello there" now and then that is both quick to come and go, but acts as a reminder that it's still there, The thing is when these greetings are mixed in with the dull, heavy ache that has also made itself known recently, it can become a little more difficult to cut through all the noise.
Thankfully on this occasion, it seems that everything is doing ok.
So the beat goes on.
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