Almost a Pleasant Day...

     After the turmoil of getting me into the hospital bed in my room, the taking of vital signs, plugging me up to the telemetry machine, having a sling put on my right arm, and trying without success to pop some of the poppers on the ridiculous hospital gown, I was comfortably settled down, and Joan was able to order breakfast over the phone. The menu was in the room, and we ordered breakfast, lunch, and dinner from a wide variety of choices. The results were better than airline food, though falling short of a decent restaurant.
   The day passed rather pleasantly, dozing, eating my meals, doing Guardian crosswords (one completed: one needing a few words when we left on Thursday morning), and reading Anthony Trollope (you intellectual snob, Cutler) on my Kindle. And, of course, chatting with the ever-solicitous Joan, who cheered me up immensely. Not feeling great, but--well--alright, more or less.
   The right arm was the problem. The incision for the pacemaker was just below my right collar bone, so that  movement of my right arm had to be restricted--ideally with my elbow tucked into my side, and on no account was my elbow to be raised to the level of my shoulder. This certainly restricted my mobility and made a number of ordinary tasks quite difficult, but Joan was always there with a helping hand and her presence was always comforting. I experienced very little pain, except when I made some move with my right arm that seemed to twist the incision or pull the dressing on it.
   My blood pressure was erratic: the nurse spoke with the doctor and I was given a pill. As the day went on, with vital signs being taken every four hours, the blood pressure readings went down, but then climbed back up. I began to wonder if the solution to the problem of my heart might not exacerbate my blood pressure problem. ("You can never do just one thing" is an adage to which I subscribe) After all, if my heart was now beating faster, wouldn't that blood being pumped around faster than before have some effect on the pressure?
   Joan left late in the afternoon, taking the car home and handing it over to John to drive over and visit me. He came after a couple of hours, and during those hours alone, I began to feel, well, lonely. I could certainly buzz the bell and get the nurse, which I did once, to ask her if I could now get out of bed and go to the lavatory.  Up until then, I had used the bottle, and Joan had immediately tipped out the bottle and washed it out, much to the consternation of the nurse, who was supposed to measure my "output."This came out well into the day, when the nurse asked, with a rather strange choice of words, had I "voided."
   Where was I? Feeling lonely for a couple of hours; and after John had visited, and I realized I had the whole night to face alone, I began to feel VERY lonely. I supposed that if any alarm signal was sent from my telemetry transmitter to the nurse's station, lights would flash and people would come running.
   So rather grimly, after a visit from a new nurse at 8.00 pm to check my vital signs, I tried to settle down for the night...