HAVE YOU EVER thought you had so much to do that you couldn’t get ill?
I have. When I first started experiencing discomfort in my chest earlier this year, getting sick was most definitely inconvenient. I had work to do, studying to keep up with, and all the other ordinary things that make up life.
Whatever this was, I didn’t really have time for it. I didn’t take it as seriously as I might have done.
The discomfort wasn’t severe. It was like a dull ache, a feeling of tension or tightness around the left side of my chest, close to the breastbone. The first time I noticed it was mid-May, and over the following weeks it came and went. Sometimes it lasted for hours. I also experienced a lot of indigestion. I couldn’t identify anything that made it better or worse.
So I did what I suspect many of us do when something doesn’t fit into our plans: I carried on regardless.
But one thing made it harder to dismiss completely: my family history.
One of my brothers has had a heart attack; my father lived with heart failure; my dad’s brother died from a heart attack after ignoring symptoms similar to indigestion. That’s why, although I kept telling myself that what I was experiencing was probably nothing to worry about, I couldn’t quite make myself believe it.
Eventually, one Saturday in June, I called NHS 111, the free, 24/7 non-emergency medical advice service provided by the National Health Service in the UK.
I had been living with the symptoms for several weeks without acknowledging the possibility that they might be serious. While the concern had remained largely inside my own head, I could tell myself that it was probably nothing. But when I had to describe the symptoms to another person, I heard myself saying what had actually been happening: recurring chest discomfort, sometimes lasting for hours, against a background of high blood pressure and a family history of heart disease.
It was only when I finally spoke my symptoms and concerns out loud that I realised how much anxiety I was feeling underneath my attempts to explain them away. NHS 111 advised me to attend the nearest NHS walk-in centre as soon as possible to seek urgent medical assessment.
While I was talking to them, my husband came home. When I told him that I needed to go to the walk-in centre urgently, I cried.
I wasn’t expecting that.
Later, at the walk-in centre, a nurse challenged me about why I hadn’t come in weeks earlier, and advised me to go to the emergency department at the hospital.
I cried again.
I had carried the uncertainty for several weeks, and suddenly other people were taking it seriously enough to investigate. It was uncomfortable to recognise that I had not been entirely honest with myself about how frightened I was.
The waiting room photograph I took that day doesn’t look particularly significant. It is simply a picture of a screen showing waiting times in a hospital. But for me, that photograph now carries a very different meaning.
I was no longer sitting at home wondering whether I was imagining the significance of my symptoms. I had asked for help, and now I had to wait to find out what other people thought was happening.
The emergency medical team gave me an electrocardiogram (ECG), a blood test and a chest X-ray. The results were reassuring.
The immediate concern about my heart was not borne out by those investigations, and I was referred back to my GP to investigate a possible gastric cause for the symptoms. A further test for the bacterium H. pylori, associated with peptic ulcers and increased risk of gastric cancer, also came back negative. The most immediate concerns had been reassuringly addressed, although the cause of the symptoms still needs further investigation.
It was a huge relief. But I also felt overwhelming gratitude: for the NHS staff who took my concerns seriously, for my husband, who dropped everything to sit with me in the walk-in centre and emergency department, and for the reassuring test results.
This year, I have been eating better and losing weight. I am still not active enough, and there is clearly more I could do to look after my health. But perhaps I have been carrying an image of myself based on how healthy I used to be, rather than noticing the changes that have already happened.
The experience did not suddenly make me healthy, and a clear ECG and reassuring tests don’t mean there is nothing I need to think about. I still have high blood pressure, and a family history of heart disease. I still need further investigation into the cause of the symptoms, and I still need to become more active.
But perhaps I have also been too ready to think of myself as someone whose health is inevitably deteriorating because of age and family history. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe some of the choices I have been making are already making a difference. Alongside the gratitude, I began to feel hope.
This experience also highlighted another lesson for me: As I am training for ordained ministry, I am spending a lot of time thinking about how to care for other people. Pastoral care, listening, accompanying, encouraging and being alongside people when life is difficult are all becoming increasingly important parts of my understanding of ministry.
But there is an obvious danger in learning to care for others: we can become much more comfortable with giving care than receiving it.
I am quite comfortable being useful. I am less comfortable being vulnerable.
It is much easier to encourage somebody else to seek help than to admit that I might need help. It is easier to sit with somebody else’s uncertainty than to sit in a hospital waiting room wondering what the tests might reveal about me.
Yet perhaps receiving care is part of learning to care.
The Christian story is full of people who are called not only to serve but also to receive: hospitality, healing, friendship, forgiveness, grace. We cannot always be the ones who have something to offer.
Sometimes we are the ones who need somebody else to notice us, to say ‘I’m worried’, and to sit and wait while somebody else cares for us.
Back home that evening, my husband and I had planned to watch a film – the latest in the James Bond franchise: No Time To Die. As I watched, I noticed that the film’s title took on a different meaning for me. The sudden, unexpected turn of events that day had brought me closer to an awareness of my own mortality.
None of us needs a hospital visit to know that we will eventually die. Death is simply part of being human. Yet most of the time we manage to keep that knowledge somewhere in the background. We know it, but we don’t necessarily live with it.
Until something happens that brings it closer.
For me, it wasn’t a diagnosis, or even severe symptoms. It was the realisation that I didn’t know what was causing something that was happening in my own body, combined with memories of people in my family for whom heart disease had been much more serious.
It made mortality feel less abstract. But perhaps that is not a bad thing.
Christianity has a great deal to say about death, but Christian hope is not simply about escaping death. The resurrection story at the heart of our faith does not deny the reality of death; it proclaims that death does not have the final word.
I don’t want to turn a worrying episode of chest discomfort into some grand spiritual lesson. But I do think there is something to be learned from being reminded, even briefly, that life is finite.
What stayed with me most was not the fear that I might die, but the realisation that I don’t want to take life for granted.
There are still people I love and want to spend time with, things I want to learn, places I want to go, work I still feel called to do, relationships I want to nurture and communities I want to support. There is the ministry I am still discovering, and there is still plenty about myself that I am learning to accept, to change, and to become.
That doesn’t mean I intend to live every day as though it might be my last. I don’t think that would be healthy or even possible. But there is a difference between living as though every day is our last and living with an awareness that every day is a gift.
The experience also reminded me that caring for our health is not simply about trying to prolong our lives indefinitely. It can be an expression of gratitude for the life we have been given.
Eating better, becoming more active, and maintaining a healthy weight matter. But so does paying attention when something doesn’t feel right, and knowing when to ask for help.
I don’t want to remember my uncle’s death simply as a warning about what can happen when we ignore our health. I would rather see it as a reminder to pay attention to the life I have been given.
Maybe that is why the title of that James Bond film took on new meaning: there is no time to waste in taking life for granted, pretending that vulnerability only affects other people, or being too proud to ask for help.
There is also no time to waste in imagining that caring for others means we never need to be cared for ourselves, or failing to notice the people, relationships, opportunities and ordinary moments that make life worth living.
The tests were reassuring. The symptoms may have a simpler, less serious explanation. I hope the changes I have already made to my health are making a difference, and I know there is more I can do.
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