About Me
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For this challenge, I just want to focus on the heart aspect, but otherwise I'm an ordinary, married, family man of 79, trying to do something to mark my 80th in August. I also describe myself as a very lucky guy. Heart history is not good, my father died at 65 (but he had smoked Woodbines all his life). I first realized that I had a problem when I had a few incidents of collapse on the football field and the squash court and eventually Barts Hospital London diagnosed an arrhythmia which they described as my heart not reaching a "rev limit", but just beating faster and faster until it was just fluttering and not pumping blood. I think that's called Ventrcular Fibrillation. Barts was something of a pioneer in hearts back then, and once diagnosed, meds allowed me a pretty normal life and I continued playing squash for example until my late 60s.
Over the years, my heart problems changed and the wonderful team at Royal Bournemouth Hospital have carried out various procedures for me, I'm on my third pacemaker (batteries last about 7 years), I've had an "Ablation" and a "Cardioversion" (something like switching a computer or something off, then on again to re-set it). All this is helped by research by British Heart Foundation. The Cardioversion worked particularly well for me and gave me many years of good quality life, but despite all this, last year was a year of poor health with a urinary infection that seemed to mess up my heart's performance, then Covid and Long Covid (massive fatigue for 6 months and still affecting me), then another urinary infection and E-Coli, a colon cancer scare, and in October a heart attack.
Anyway, I now feel a lot more "normal". Last year, before all this, I bought an exercise bike aiming to do an actual cycle ride from Bournemouth to the town where I was born, Darwen in Lancashire, but then it was suggested that I just use the exercise bike to do a virtual bike ride, and being a huge football fan, and a supporter of Liverpool for over 60 years, I thought that it would be fun to make the challenge to visit (virtually), all the present 92 clubs. It then seemed logical (to me ), to create a route starting in the far South West, Plymouth Argyle, and finish at Anfield.
Peter
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