Whilst I was in hospital recovering from OHS, the guy opposite me in the ward was about to go for mitral valve surgery; he was an oncology consultant himself and had experience cardiac arrest the previous week whilst at work. Anyway, the medical staff came to his bed to take him down, we (in his ward) wished him luck, and the medical staff took him away.
I then went for a wander around the ward (anything to avoid my dalteparin ***!)
I was back in 5 minutes - and so was my ward mate!
Turns out they had taken him to theatre prep-room, and they were seconds away from injecting the anaesthesia, when somebody burst in to say "Stop! There's an emergency admission to ER and the patient needs to urgently go onto an ECMO, and yours is the only one available"
The poor guy had already been worried about hs surgery, so to have this "false start" and then know he'd have to go through it again, must have been awful!
Jim