June 24, 2004. Five more minutes of the quarter-final match and England would be knocked out of Euro 2004 by the Portuguese if they didn’t do something spectacular. Frank Lampard turned 180°, blasted the equalizer into the Portuguese net, and sent England into the penalty shootout. My brothers and I leapt with joy at our television set, and my tachycardia returned. Please, not again.
I excused myself from my brothers and went back to my bedroom. It was probably a good thing, as it spared me the agony of watching David Beckham blast the football over the net in the shootout. But I had a decision to make. Go back to the hospital again or take matters into my own hands this time. Perhaps it was the doing of inadequately developed frontal lobes in a young trainee then; I chose the latter, inserted a needle into my antecubital vein, and injected the verapamil. It worked. My heart rate went down, but so did my blood pressure, and I spent the next 10 minutes on the floor, nursing a systolic pressure of 70 mm Hg.