Appreciation (46) – Generator refit

Appreciation (46) – Generator refit

Torrey Orton

June 28, 2012

25 minutes for a decade of life

I went to the electronics repair shop a few weeks ago, sat around for 6 hours and had a 25 minute refit. My pacemaker was replaced. Two weeks later I'd hardly know it. There's no visible change in my behaviour or appearance. For the inexperienced (even my GP's nurse receptionist) I offer a touch of the soft but unyielding pad which is the "generator" sitting just below the skin on my left front shoulder. About 3cm square by 1 deep. Recently, I almost fell into a slightly competitive 'I'll show you mine if you show me yours' with a patient bearing babyhood scald scars he needed to share. It's that I don't really believe the generator is there unless I see it. Showing others is a validating experience in my reality stakes.

Things I learned: a pacemaker IS a generator; it produces pulses to prick the heart back into action if it forgets to beat here or there (which is my potential affliction; it only happened once in the last ten years, for which I have had the distinction of the generator ever since); I can sleep through many things, including this procedure for which anaesthesia was provided locally (I felt that); staff told me I snored throughout (perhaps because it was a valium assisted take off?). Wish I could sleep normally. Can't seem to learn that.

I walked out at the end of the six hours, fuelled up with a latte and a Danish (first eats in 18 hours apart from a single round of skinny sandwiches and some juice or tea immediately post insertion – and no seconds), stood around for a taxi and got home to remind myself not to wave my hands over my head in triumph. The generator leads in my heart might get loose. It takes a month to get them so organically enmeshed that the body around them will collapse before they do. Well, so a surgeon told me my first time around. He said a patient of his came back from a car accident where the pacemaker had borne the brunt of the impact without the slightest skip in performance. Rugged. What, me worry? I didn't bother to ask what else remained of said patient.

Unfortunately they haven't improved battery life, while allegedly 'improving' the guardian performance. A bit like laptops and such…ever improved and still unreliable. The generator's reliable enough but a bit short of breath one would think.

Maybe by writing this I'll understand why I think it's a bit of joke, this whole body decomposition thing that is advancing maturity. The fact doesn't get in the way when I'm doing things requiring the slightest bit of attention. But there's obviously a background discussion within me because it surfaces as a low grade wonder about my prospects of being here tomorrow when my attention is free. The generator is not likely to be a major player in the culmination of my maturity, but its presence is a reminder.

Back to the waiting room on the day: there were four or five generator insertion candidates lying around (it was pre-op after all, not a cafe) one of whom was a young woman I'd guess to have been 25 max. She was scared. Probably her first generator. Maybe I was/am, too, for my second.