An upper left chest pain kept me awake since Thursday morning and could no longer be put off, plus it meant I could not mind the shop for Fred on his most important motorcycle day of the year. I had to take a taxi, which I have not been in for what, ten years? Hospital visits are somewhat routine for me, only this time the false alarm may have produced some positive results. The chest pain turned out to be muscular (sure fooled me), but during the battery of tests, they finally caught my heart doing what I’ve been saying all along: that elusive irregular beating due to stress. Now I have four doctors agreeing that I require a defibrillator. This is a heart implant valued around $20,000 for the gadget and add another $30,000 for the procedure.
I declined to have it done until at least another several weeks, because I have a bad cold and because I still have the chest pain. My system tells me that both these could potentially mask complications or side-effects I’d rather stay aware of. Defibrillators have been around since, what, 1970, and they have a 7 to 10 year battery life. They kickstart your heart if it decides to stop beating momentarily. This is what may be the source of my symptoms over the years.
Essentially, it is a disk they insert into an incision near your left shoulder, then push into place with a couple for rods, tucking a small power unit in your upper chest. It is an out-patient procedure and leaves only a small scar. The only bad news is this irregular beating is what kills the majority of people with my condition. On the other hand, all four doctors have known people with defibs to live another 30 years. A total of five cardiologists want to go ahead with the defib, so who am I to disagree?
I never take enough reading material, so I wound up again watching the in-house (hospital) cable TV for a day. I never was a fan of “Breaking Bad”, but now that I’ve seen ten or more episodes, I may watch the series. Two things put me off the series, one is the claim that the star was the best TV actor of all time, and we all know that was Gilligan. Also, the different episodes seemed to me to jump all over the place. Other than constant reruns of “Sahara” with Penelope Cruz, who is almost as good looking as the women I date when in Venezuela, I did nothing most of the day.
Before I went in, I bothered to fire off a mess of documents and paperwork for my retirement, pension, estate and began the process of changing my will. Just so you know, there is a world of difference between some bum on welfare who lands in the hospital and gets sewn up at public expense, and different man who meticulously reads the rule book and arranges his affairs years in advance in such as manner as to qualify. Intelligent folks can tell the difference.
Have you seen eBay’s new pitch? They have gone green without investing a thing. According to their ads, buying a second-hand wristwatch “saves” the same electricity as not running your refrigerator for 39 weeks. That is really stretching things, eBay. Next you will claim to be the nation’s second-largest recycler, right after eHarmony.
