Paphos Life

I had an appointment with my cardiologist this Saturday and he wished me a happy birthday – this puzzled me and he explained to me that it is, by chance, exactly 30 years since the first pacemaker was installed. I mostly keep private things to myself but I thought that this anniversary may be sufficient to help anybody who may be hesitating whether to have a pacemaker installed or not.

Happy Birthday to your pacemaker!

All the best Pacey

And there was me thinking somebody cared.

*sniff*

Me too!

exactly 30 years since the first pacemaker was installed

- would that have been in Cyprus?

8 October 1958, D Day for the implantable pacemaker

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2572009/

Indeed, various types of pacemaker have been available for many decades and have prolonged millions of lives. Mine was implanted in a small hospital in New Hampshire, as I was on a business trip at the time; before the operation the surgeon gave me a 50-50 chance of reaching home alive!

I could tell you a long anecdote about an incident in the Nicosia general – somewhat gruesome in nature, if you wish.

Yes, I wish.

You really must have been quite young to get a pacemaker fitted Brian. Pardon the daft question but, what was your particular heart problem?

Maggie

Two months short of 59 when it happened. The old ticker started to miss beats two or, occasionally, three at a time. The mild anecdote was that the airline had lost my medication (stupidly put in my suitcase) and had to go to the local hospital for a new lot. The doctor there insisted on an auscultation and whipped me straight into the emergency ward.

The gruesome one was that I had a regular replacement of the pacemaker at Nicosia general and a couple of weeks later, the darn thing fell out of the skin pocket in my right chest because of an infection of the skin. So there I was sitting with the pacemaker in my hand, and all the emergency bells ringing because my heart had stopped. I stuck it back where it belonged which got it going again but in the meanwhile I have never seen the medical staff move so quickly to see why my heart had apparently stopped. Talk about panic stations! I was whipped into surgery and they put a new one in the top left shoulder, taking every measure to prevent infection of this site from the old one, reaching the new one. This was done under local anaesthetic and as I was lying there, in the operating theatre, I amused myself watching the dust motes. I almost literally stood there with my heart in my hands.