Pills, Pills, and more Pills.

     About a week ago I had two appointments--one with the cardiologist and one with a pleasant young lady--a technician from St. Jude Medical--who performed the much-heralded "interrogation." This was a non-event, totally unexciting, taking all of five minutes. I took my shirt off, and she draped a wire with some sort of sensor around the back of my neck so that it hung down over the bump of my pulse generator: sorry--I should say 'pacemaker' as you may not be one of the cognoscenti. The sensor was connected to a printer/reader device that spewed out a long roll of paper that would be reviewed by the cardiologist. "But don't expect to hear from him as I can see that everything is working perfectly," said the technician. End of interrogation, except for--"fix an appointment for a further check in three months time."
     The appointment with the cardiologist was less satisfactory as he decided to change my pill regime. In addition to the blood thinner (Pradaxa--the hugely expensive drug at $750 for three months' supply), he prescribed a beta blocker (Micardis), the function of which is not clear to me. He also changed my blood pressure medication to something called Multaq (sounds like a Taliban leader) and annoyingly it has to be taken twice a day. So now I have to take three pills first thing in the morning and two pills at night. The pill-taking is all getting to be a bit too much. Mornings are not so bad, but I do tend to forget in the evening, and sometimes before I fall asleep I suddenly remember I have not taken the required two pills. It's not so bad if we are home in the evening and I can take them with our meal; but if we go out to eat or travel it is only too easy to forget. And just the fact that I have this pill regime is a constant reminder to me that all is not well
     The cardiologist did emphasize that I should return to my usual exercise regime, and I have started to do so, getting back to my routine of treadmill, bicycle, and elliptical trainer for 40 minutes or so each morning. I cannot lift weights as my shoulder hurts if I attempt anything more than a five pound dumbbell.
     The good news is that I have begun to forget that I have the damn pacemaker, although from time to time, particularly if I raise my right arm higher than usual, I do get pain in the general area of my wound and shoulder just to remind me that it's there.
     I have also had the experience of being patted down twice at airports as I refused to go through the magnetometer. Next time, I think I'll risk it, as the patting down procedure is very elaborate. At Dulles Airport I had to wait while the expert patter down was found, by which time my jacket and shoes and the Macbook had all passed through the x-ray and were sitting there blocking the line of containers until Joan managed to scoop them up. The training for a patter downer is obviously very rigorous: put the blue rubber gloves on, explain the routine and the private parts that will be invaded, ask if you would prefer the patting down to take place in private, ask if there is any area that is sensitive, and then get to work--feeling with open hands, patting with the back of the hands, smoothing down this and that, and finally taking the gloves to a machine that presumably checks whether you have been in contact with explosives. Exactly the same routine--with exactly the same script--was followed at Santa Barbara on the return trip. I think I'll just speed through the magnetometer next week when we fly to England.
I suppose that I am coming to the end of this blog. I hope I am, although I am still somewhat anxious about my heart. First it was the fibrillation, from which, according to the cardiologists, I "got out of" naturally: my heart corrected the situation, leaving unanswered why it had fibrillated in the first place and  whether it would fibrillate again. Then it was the bradycardia--heart too slow and stopping from time to time--for which the pacemaker was installed. Now, it seems--that's it. Heart problem over and done with? Back to a well-tempered heart (?) that went up to 122 beats per minute on the bicycle and treadmill this morning. Or is there something else lurking there that has so far not been detected? One wonders.

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