Pause for a pacemaker

Apologies to all my readers for this rather lengthy pause in my musings. I have got half an excuse in that I have had a heart pacemaker fitted.
If you don't mind a short digression from the subject in hand, I don't mind enlarging a bit in delicate matters of the heart so to speak, if you do, just scroll down until you come to the line of asterixes (whatever the plural of that word is)
Let me start by saying, that I definitely do not belong to those who denigrate our British National Health Service in any shape or form. I think it is wonderful. My procedures must have cost many thousands of pounds, but the only time I heard money mentioned was when a nurse offered me a penny for my thoughts.
That was at the time when no-one really knew what was wrong with me, including me, and I was hooked up to machines which bleeped and blinked and had lots of tentacles which stuck to me and itched.
The first big test was the angiogram, which meant staying in hospital for the day. The procedure involved cutting into a big artery in the groin, and threading a catheter through it up into my heart. Yes, it sounds gruesome, but it wasn't. The theatre was so modern, that I thought, in my tranquilizedup to the eyeballs way,that I had been transported to an alien spaceship, with a technology far superior to ours.
The worst part about it was having to lie flat on my back for two hours afterwards. Or perhaps it was the awful sandwiches they gave us, straight from the fridge that was the very worst, especially as we actually ate most of them, having been starved since the night before. Yes there were four of us done that day, at hourly intervals, but we all made it safely home that afternoon.
Next came numerous blood tests, from the vampire department - tubes and tubes of the stuff .
And then came the fun of having a twenty-four hour heart monitor strapped to my chest. I was actually feeling fine that day, and was able to carry on just as I normally did. However, the verdict, when it came through was that my heart was missing beats and in general misbehaving itself. And that was without consciously even setting eyes on any particularly dishy male throughout the whole day. My husband sadly, does not come into that category any more although I suppose he must have done once. Getting older is a sad state of affairs, when you think about it.
So the result was, that I was hauled into hospital yet again to have a pacemaker inserted just under my left collar-bone.
The fun bit was, that I was conscious throughout the operation. I was as high as a kite, but more or less compus mentes. I would have liked to have had a mirror hung up to enable me to see exactly what was going on, but as it was, I had to make do with the reflexion of a shiny metal arm which gave rather a distorted image of things, to say the least. But I did get a blow-by blow account, as the surgeon had his mentor standing right behind him. I learnt that one wire was going into the right atrium and the other into the right ventricle. I did ask which one was which, but the surgeon was so busy telling me that he had never got round to discussing the polarity of the wires with any patient before, that I think he forgot to tell me, or I forgot the answer; one of the two. But I have got an excuse, I was only half way down from my morphine high.
They hadn't been able to get the local anaesthetic to produce the desired effect, so they had given me a slug of morphine as well. That had done the trick! I was away with the fairies for at least ten minutes, and when my mind made its tortuous journey down into my body again, I had the distinct feeling that they were operating on someone else, and not me at all.
I went home a day later, having spent the night with a strange man. He had had the same operation, and was in the bed opposite me. There is a great controversy raging about mixed wards, but as long as nobody snores too loudly, I don't really mind. It is more important to have someone who you can talk to and be a bit friendly with, than whether they are men or women.
It would be nice to have his and her bathrooms though. Men rarely remember to put the loo seat down.
That's was it really. I came down fully from the morphine the next day, and started to feel literally a bit down, as well as completely washed out, as my mother would have said. After all, all the excitement was over, and the pain, though not excrutiating, was definitely there. I had to devise tricks to put on and remove jackets, and anything else with sleeves, and I wasn't allowed to get the affected area wet for a week. Though I did remove most of the yellow antiseptic stuff that made my neck look as though I had some scary life-threatening disease. As I had no wish to be ringing a bell as I walked along the street, shouting 'Unclean, unclean!' I decided to wash off any remaining trace that would have been visible above my clothing before presenting myself in public.
It has taken a month for my old zest for life to return, but return it has. I want to do things again, and am strong enough once more. But I have to admit, I did my fair share of moaning in the meantime, as my friends and family would testify. (Given half a chance)
I think it is time for the asterixes.
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The trouble is, that I don't feel like writing any more today. But now that I have got into the swing of things again, there will not be a very long pause, so keep watching this space.