Ping Go the Strings of My Heart

I took yesterday afternoon off to go to St Vincent’s to see my Cardiologist, only to be told that my appointment is the day after tomorrow.

I was quite psyched up for yesterday. I was going to ask why my muscles stay in spasm for so long after my pacemaker does its thrice-daily test-run, why it sometimes actually stings when it starts up, and why this has started a bruise which now stretches down the inside of my left arm almost as far as my elbow. (I read that sentence back a second before I published this, and realised that it said “my muscles stay in spam”. This is a fairly accurate description of my current physical condition).

In other words, I was going to give out. It’s true that familiarity breeds contempt – I used to be just grateful that the pacemaker had cured my blackouts, now I’m starting to get annoyed about why it can’t do it a bit more surreptitiously.

Anyway, it turns out I was there on the wrong day (perhaps all the scans that said there was nothing wrong with my brain weren’t entirely accurate), so my complaints remain thus far unvoiced.

My pacemaker celebrated this by turning itself on at four o’clock this morning and continuing to ping away until I eventually got up at 5.15 in frustration.

The bloody thing is laughing at me.

The Gift of Timing – The Birth of Tinman, Part 6

We’ve all had cars, TVs and other things which stopped working, yet when a ServicePerson turned up to fix them they worked perfectly, but then they’d pack up again as soon as said ServicePerson had left (fifty quid richer). In my case I’ve also had the experience of wearing a heart monitor for 48 hours and having my heart behave perfectly for all of that time. Still, my luck was about to change.

I turned up in St Vincents Hospital on December 18th to get a loop monitor inserted in my chest. The Cardiologist had explained that this might be in place for up to 18 months, and that they would take readings from it every three months or so to see  if my heartbeat was irregular or not.

In due course I was brought into a room and three doctors and a nurse set to work, wiring me up and then spreading a local anaesthetic on my chest, all the time chatting happily away like any group of professionals performing a routine task. But just as they started to make the incision I began to feel the by now familiar sinking sensation.

It was astonishing – I was blacking out in front of four medical people who were investigating my blacking out. Has anyone ever shown a better sense of timing?

If my blackouts used to cause panic among my workmates, it was nothing compared to the effect one had in a hospital. When I came round again I had an oxygen mask strapped to my face and the doctors were pressing buttons and turning knobs, all the time yelling at me to try and wake me up. When they saw I was ok one of them gave such a big sigh of relief that his mask inflated briefly in front of him like bubblegum. I think they thought they’d killed me, and I’d imagine their paperwork would be fairly onerous in such an event. Anyway, the four of them had seen my heart rate drop so low that it stopped briefly, so instead of three months I was told to return in four weeks to have the monitor read. “We reckon you need a pacemaker,” one of them said, “we just need some readings to show to a consultant.”

Four weeks passed with no real activity apart from the night of January 11th, when I awoke knowing I’d just had a pretty bad one, so on the 15th I went to work till eleven, then said “I’m off to get this thing read, I’ll be back around two”, left my computer running and my rucksack beside my desk, and headed off to Vincents. The lovely Áinle in Cardiology hooked me up, read the printouts, frowned and then said “I just want to show this to someone”, which I didn’t like the sound of, then practically ran out of the room, which I didn’t like the look of even more. She returned with four doctors, which is probably rarely a good sign. One of them showed me the printouts and pointed to a long black line which went on for page after page. “See that?” she said, “that’s your heart stopped for eighteen seconds last Friday night.” Even I was awestruck into silence by this.

“Anyway,” she continued, “we gave you the monitor to see if you needed a pacemaker, and now we know you do. We’re going to admit you, take out the monitor, and put the pacemaker in”.

“When?” I asked. She stared at me. “Now,” she said, “eighteen seconds is a very long time.” (She didn’t add “like, hello?” but the phrase hung unspoken in the air between us).

So that was it. I rang Mrs Tin to tell her, and to ask her to bring in pyjamas and a dressing gown (well actually, to buy pyjamas and a dressing gown, because the comfy old t-shirts that you wear in your own bed seem decidedly shabby when you realise that the general public are going to see them). Then I rang GoldenEyes at work to tell her I wouldn’t be back, and to turn off my computer, then rang her again to tell her that I had a sandwich in my rucksack that she should either eat or throw away. After that I was dressed in a fetching hospital gown, complete with the kind of super-low neckline at the back that goes right down to your arse, and was brought off to meet the people in Cardiac Care who were to be my roommates for the next eight days.

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Will Tinman survive the operation? Er, well, yes, I’m the one telling the story. Oh, right, there won’t be much suspense so. Still, if you’ve stuck with it this far you might as well read the end of the saga in Part 7  – “The Tinman Cometh” .

Testing Times – The Birth of Tinman, Part 5

The heart monitor showed nothing.

This was a pity, since it sent us off in the wrong direction for a few months. With my own GP now back from holiday I had blood tests, an MRI scan, a (shudder) prostate test, all of which were negative. Meanwhile I was still blacking out every now and again (though I did have one glorious 57-day stretch without one), but had got better at recognising the onset signs, and usually managed to sit or lie somewhere before the actual collapse, so I wasn’t injuring myself anymore.

In my local I used to prop myself in a corner of the bar, with my back to the wall, the counter on my right side, and the back of my stool on my left, and actually blacked out briefly there one night without falling, and with only one person of the three I was sitting with noticing what had happened. It’s a sign of how adaptive I was becoming to living with this permanently that I stayed on in the pub after the blackout, instead of rushing home as I did the first time.

Though I was slowly becoming resigned to a life without driving, without swimming, without walking anywhere alone, my wonderful GP certainly wasn’t, and her next step was to send me to a Neurologist – the brother of a TV personality much praised in this piece by Holemaster . It was he (no, I don’t mean Holemaster) who started the whole cycle that led to me getting better.

Dr Niall Tubridy – feck it, let’s name him, he was great – looks like, is as thin as, and has the same voice as his brother (really spookily, when I arrived into his Reception his brother’s show was on the radio). He listened to my story from the beginning and then said “so, what have you got?”

I stared at him. “Come on,” he said, “we all know the Internet’s out there, what have you looked up?”

I named a few things. “And what do you think you have?” he asked again.

“Er, all of them,” I muttered.

“Look, I’m going to give you all the brain tests now,” he said, “but I’m telling you before I start that this is a heart problem.”

“I’ve had a heart monitor, ” I said. “I don’t care,” he replied, “From what you’ve told me there’s something wrong with your heart. I’m going to write to your GP and tell her to organise an appointment with a cardiologist here.”

I was impressed by the fact that he said this before he gave me the neurological tests, as he wouldn’t have looked too clever if he’d then given me the tests and said “shit, no, I was wrong, there is something wrong with your brain”.

He was as good as his word, and a couple of weeks later I found myself in front of Dr Colm Keane, a cardiologist who decided that I should have a loop monitor fitted inside my chest which would record every time my heartbeat went above or below a certain level. An appointment was made, and on December 15th I turned up to have this fitted.

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But the first monitor showed nothing. Will this be any different? Read on in Part 6 – “The Gift of Timing”.

Bedless in Bedlam – The Birth of Tinman, Part 4

So, I was put into an ambulance in front of the entire staff of the entire five floors of our building. Just to really rub it in, the one way system around Abbey Street meant that the ambulance had to drive round the building and then, nee-naring happily away, drive past them all again.

I was fairly groggy, having hit my head pretty hard, but when I looked over at GoldenEyes I was shocked.  I’ve never seen anyone so pale in all my life, and I realised that she (and probably the rest of the office) thought I was dying.The ambulance girl was testing me all this time, and it was she who was the first person ever to mention that my heart rate was very low, though she did say it might be because of shock. By then we had arrived at the Mater, and got the chance to experience A&E, Irish style.

I hadn’t rung Mrs Tin yet, since I decided that I’d wait till I had more info on what was wrong with me. I knew she’d have to give a reason why she was leaving to the Tinkids, and reckoned having her say “I’m going to see your Dad in the Hospital, I don’t know how bad he is” before driving off  would not go well. I also wanted to be able to tell her what ward I was staying in. It was only many hours later that I began to suspect that in fact they weren’t going to keep me in at all.

By then I’d had heart tests, chest and head x-rays, and numerous other tests, all of which seemed to involve having yet another needle stuck into my arm and yet more blood drawn out. I’d been to the loo, but just as I got there I was asked to wait outside while four Gardai, with a fifth one who was handcuffed to a guy in a wheelchair, who was also handcuffed to the chair, went in instead (A&E in the Mater is directly across the road from Mountjoy Prison). At one stage GE and I were just sitting, saying nothing, when an orderly came over with an empty glass jar. “Urine sample”, was all he said. “Is it? It’s very clear,” I answered (I was starting to feel better). “No, I want one,” he said. I looked at GE and sighed. “You can’t say I don’t know how to give a girl a good day out,” I said, standing to head off to the loo again.

When I returned GE had been joined by the HR Fireball, a mad Nordy woman who has since left to work nearer to home and her four young kids (and who I really miss). When I said that it looked as if I might in fact not be admitted HRF was horrified, and kept pointing out my head wound to anyone passing by, and suggesting in a loud Ballymena voice that I might have concussion.

Around this time a  young doctor brought me into a room, while the two girls sat outside, one either side of the door. The doctor gave me a 48-hour heart monitor, which had wires taped to my chest that led down to a box that I had to carry around for, well, 48 hours. He then told me I could go home. “What about going back to work?” I asked. And although I had two black eyes, a big bloody (no, literally) bump on my forehead and – by his own admission in giving me the monitor – a possible heart problem, he said “I don’t see why you can’t go back tomorrow”.

Often in films a man will be cut or have blood poured on him before being dropped into a tank of pirhana or sharks, who will then devour him. I achieved much the same effect on the poor doctor (well, I was pissed off by then) by walking out the door and saying to the two girls “he says I can go back to work tomorrow”. I often wonder did he have to get therapy afterwards, after the verbal devouring they gave him.

I finally rang Mrs Tin and she set off to come & drive us all home, & we went back to the waiting room to (obviously) wait for her. By now it was after six, and A&E was full of drunks. One guy was lying across three seats and, when no-one came near him, rolled off onto the floor. One of the attendants walked over. “Come on, Peter,” he said, poking him with a biro, “you know you can’t stay here”. Unfortunately he said this in a Polish accent, and straight away one of the Real Dubs sitting waiting was up in arms, defending a fellow Irishman against this blow-in (who was taking all our jobs – after all, if he wasn’t here Real Dub could have been the one dealing with drunks & mopping up vomit). “You can’t try & move him like that. For all you know he has a serious injury”, said Real Dub, suddenly a health expert. I personally reckoned that the fact that the Polish guy knew Peter’s name probably meant that Peter tried to get a bed this way most evenings (which I later had confirmed to me, they either get admitted or the cops take them & put them in a cell – either way they get to sleep in a warm room), but Real Dub continued to harangue the attendant, demanding immediate treatment for poor afflicted Peter.

Peter somewhat spoiled his argument then by getting up, going out for a cigarette, then coming back in and lying down again.

It was almost worth the whole traumatic day just to see the look on Real Dub’s face.

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Will the heart monitor reveal anything? Will Tinman realise that there are only 2 days left till  his Pacemaker Birthday and that he has 3 parts left in this series? Find out in Part 5 – “Testing Times”.

Being Outed: The Birth of Tinman, Part 3

At six a.m on August 15th, 2007, it was raining.

I had quite an important meeting organised for that afternoon, so was dressed slightly better than usual for work. I looked out the window during breakfast, decided I didn’t fancy getting these clothes wet, and opted to drive the whole way into the office.

The only way in which driving right into the very heart of Dublin is ever an option is to be there before seven a.m., so I rocketed along the M50 at astonishing speeds (in the aforementioned rain) and duly arrived at 6.55. Now I know that I could, of course, have blacked out at 120kph on the Motorway, but at the time they were still happening infrequently enough to not loom large in my mind.

That was the last time I drove for seven months.

At about 10.30 I was walking back from the kitchen in the office with a mug of tea and a glass of water. About ten feet from my desk I felt the now familiar draining begin. Desperate that no-one see me fall, I put the water on a printer and then knelt down, hoping I could fight it off. I then, rather amazingly, placed my tea on the carpet a few feet away from me, so that when I did black out and topple over, as of course had always been inevitable, I did as little damage as possible.

I was comprehensively outed, though, especially as MyAgeGirl saw me fall and apparently ran round yelling “CPR! CPR!”. When I came round I opened my eyes, saw about twenty people around me, and closed them tight. “Crap, I’m at work, aren’t I?” I muttered.

“You are,” I heard The Overlord say. I opened my eyes again, sat up at looked at everyone. “Well, this is embarrassing,” I said.

“Do you need CPR?” asked The Overlord. “Dunno,” I said, “can I pick who I get it from?”

He just stared at me for a second. “You’re feeling better, I take it,” he said drily.

And I was. So I got up, went back to my desk, assured everyone that I was fine, didn’t need to go home, was seeking treatment, etc. People came and suggested possible causes, everything from Epilepsy (my own vote at the time), to Multiple Sclerosis(?).

And the morning drifted on. People still suggested I should go home, but I couldn’t, because GoldenEyes and I still had this meeting with a guy over from the UK later that afternoon.

Neither of us ever got there. At 12.15 the fire alarm sounded in the building. A restaurant was being fitted-out on the ground floor at the time, and the oxy-actylene torches would set the alarm off about three times a week. We all grumbled, got-up, and all five floors – about 400 people – trooped down the stairs and gathered outside in the Millennium Walkway.

And that was when I felt it again. I leaned back against the wall, said to GoldenEyes “I feel terrible,” and before she could do anything, I fell face forward onto the concrete. My forehead and right eye swelled straight up like a balloon, and though I came round almost immediately, someone from one of the other companies on another floor had already rung for an ambulance.

It was agreed that GE would come with me, and off we headed for the Mater Hospital.

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Will they find out what’s wrong? What’s A&E in the Mater like on a Wednesday afternoon? Find out in Part 4 – “Bedless in Bedlam”.

Starless and Bible-Black – The Birth of Tinman, Part 2

I am often first into the office, since during the working week I seem to wake up very early, though at weekends I revert to my teenager-self and have to be dragged out of bed by a tow-truck.

One morning in May 2007 I was alone in the office when I bent down to pick up a box and awoke on the ground, with a pain in the top of my head where I had hit it off a wall-corner on my way down.

I jumped up with a shock, trying to figure out what had happened. I vaguely remembered a draining feeling, as if all sensation was pouring out of me, starting at the top of my head and slowly sliding down about as far as my shoulders before I felt just blackness. I also remembered a struggle to re-awaken, and there seemed to be shouting, as if I were shouting at myself to wake up.

The strange thing was that now that I was awake I felt absolutely fine, so I didn’t go home. I just carried on working, typing with one hand while rubbing my herad vigourously with the other (which actually didn’t slow down my typing speed all that much). I persuaded myself that I had actually fallen asleep for a second, and resolved to stop getting up quite so early.

About two weeks later, on a quiet Monday night in my local, I was talking to two friends when I suddenly felt the draining again. I said “I feel really weird” and then toppled sideways off my bar-stool, hitting (wouldn’t you know it) my head off the corner of the radiator on the way down. Again there was the blackness, the struggle to awaken and the shouting, though this time there was of course actual shouting. Again I felt fine when I awoke and kept assuring everyone that I was grand. I looked longingly at the remaining three-quarters of my drink but decided I’d look really sad if I sat there and drank it, so I accepted a lift home from the bar-owner. I told myself again that I had fallen asleep, though it sounded a lot less convincing this time, so that night I told Mrs Tin for the first time. I also told GoldenEyes and The Overlord (the MD) at work, was told by all three that I should do something about it, so I did. I did what any man will do when faced with a potentially serious medical problem, which is to ignore it until it gets bored and slopes away.

The next two blackouts were slightly different. One was again in the office, though this time in mid-morning, but I was sitting down and grabbed the arms of my chair so I didn’t fall over, though I did black out. As luck would have it, there was no-one sitting near me at the time, so I got away with it. The fourth one happened when I was asleep. I know that sounds unlikely, but I knew by the struggling-awake sensation that I had blacked out, and indeed by the end a total of six of my blackouts, including the very worst, occurred when I was asleep.

Anyway, by now even I had decided it was time to see a doctor. My GP is absolutely brilliant but was she was on holiday, so I went to see her stand-in. This did not go well. He clearly decided that I’d just been drunk in the pub, discounted the one where I was asleep, and was skeptical about the one where I didn’t fall out of my chair. This just left the one where I’d been picking up the box, which he said was caused by fainting from standing up too fast.

So no help there. Obviously I’d get no further unless I fell more often, or more spectacularly, or both.

Luckily, August 15th was just around the corner.

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What’s so special about August 15th? How long can Tinman keep this hidden from his workmates? Is he going to be able to think of a way to get a picture of Yelena Isinbayeva into this series? Find out the answers (though not about Yelena) in Part 3 – “Being Outed”.

Prelude to a Fall – The Birth of Tinman, Part 1

It is September 2006, and Tinman (or just Man as I was then) is drunk.

It’s Friday night at about 12.45, and I’ve just got off the last DART from Dublin, having gone straight to the pub next door with my workmates at 5.30. Drinking all evening is a talent which I’ve largely lost over the years, being more a head-out-at-ten type of bloke, but now that I’m working with other people again after years of self-employment I find the urge hard to resist.

Anyway, I’m just at the bottom of my road, with about another one hundred yards to go, when suddenly I hit my forehead really hard, skiddingly and sickeningly, against the tarmac footpath. I lie shocked on my face for a few seconds, then slowly push myself up onto my elbows. Straight away I know I’m in trouble, as I can feel blood trickling into my eye, and what isn’t trickling into my eye is dripping directly onto the footpath.

I get to my feet, finish the walk home, creep into the bathroom, and steel myself before I switch on the light. The horror show that greets me is quite impressive, though I can tell it’s all on the surface. I wake Mrs Tin, having prepped her first before I turn the light on, and between us we stop the bleeding.

Cute, aren't I

I spend the next three weeks wearing plasters, a baseball hat and dark glasses at work. I also have to wear zip-up hoodies belonging to Tinson1 as I can’t get a jumper over my head. When people ask what happened I tell them quite openly that I fell while drunk, and presumably earn myself a reputation as a lush AND a bit of an idiot. The photos of that year’s Christmas Party show my forehead as a patchwork of angry red scars, and though these have faded so as to be almost invisible now, they still do not tan, so whenever we do get sunny weather I get the mottled complexion of a giraffe, though sadly not the height.

There it is , then, a salutary tale about the evils of over-indulgence in drink. I was truly mortified at the time about what a gobshite I’d made of myself.

And yet… sometimes I’d wonder how it had happened. I didn’t trip, because the tarmac was new and there was nothing to trip on. And, while a person who’s been drinking will obviously blame everything on that, I was 48 years of age, had been drunk hundreds of times before over the previous thirtytwo years, and had never before fallen straight onto my face, making no attempt to put my hands out to stop myself.

And I’d done all the hard part … I’d left the pub in time for the train, I’d negotiated the traffic and crowds of a Friday-night city centre, I’d managed the steps at Tara Street Station, stayed awake all the way home, and then walked through the rock and mud-encrusted right-of-way through Greystones Golf Course in total darkness. Then, right at the easy part at the end, I’d just fallen over. It was as if I’d, I don’t know, blacked-out or something.

Looking back now, it’s obvious that this was the start of it all. Though nothing else was to happen for another eight months.

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Will Tinman find out what’s wrong with him? Will the blackouts start again? Will Tinman remember that this is a series, and write another chapter? Find out in Part 2 – “Starless and Bible-Black”.

Deja Bloody Voo

You couldn’t make this up.

As I said last week, I’m working on a sort of mini-series telling the whole Tinman blackout saga, the plan being to post one part each day next week and finish on Thursday, the day on which my pacemaker will be one year old.

I’ve written as far as Part 3, the day I collapsed twice in the office & an ambulance was called. Part 4, which I started on yesterday morning on the DART, concerns my madcap day after this ambulance brought me to the Mater Hospital A&E Department.

Therefore I spent yesterday morning from 6.15 to 7am writing about how on that day I was bundled into the ambulance, how GoldenEyes came with me, and what happened during our eight-hour time at the hospital.

So when, just three hours later,  I was sitting in yet another ambulance on the way to the Mater, with GoldenEyes again sitting beside me, all I could think was “Un.Bee.Fucking.Leevable”.

Our company reckons that each department should have a 5-minute “huddle” every morning, to discuss our plans and issues for the day. Everybody stands at this meeting in order to encourage it to be brief (don’t get me started about what I think of the value of these huddles, I’ve got heart problems you know). Anyway, yesterday morning I was standing at ours when I suddenly felt really light-headed and said “can I sit down?” Since the events of last year I can pretty well sit down, lie down or suddenly announce that I feel like going home any time I like, so down I sat, but when my turn came to speak I was half-way through a sentence when I suddenly stopped and said “actually, I really do feel crap”.

The meeting was ended and I went to the kitchen to make some tea. Possibly because it was very warm there, I felt again that I had to sit down quite suddenly and GE, who was now following me everywhere like a tigress minding her cub (except I don’t think tigresses say “I think you should go home. I think you should go home” over and over again) said “That’s it, I’m calling a doctor”. I tried to protest but by now she had been joined by MyAgeGirl and SuperSlimMum in a kind of girlband nagging chorus so I just muttered “Oh alright, but don’t tell everyone”. She went off for a few minutes and came back and said “Ok, the ambulance will be here soon”.

“The what?,” I said. “Don’t worry,” she said, ” I’ll get your coat and your bag, we’ll go downstairs and meet them, and no-one will know”. What she had forgotten, of course, was that it was an ambulance she had called, and they don’t hang about, so by the time she got my stuff they had already arrived, and two ambulance men suddenly burst into our office yelling “we’re looking for a Mr Tin Man”. Heads were popping up like moles in the Whack-a-Mole arcade game all over the office as I slunk out the front door. Just in case any of the office hadn’t noticed what was going on, the crew had parked the ambulance facing the wrong way on a one-way street, so they had to turn on their siren as they drove off against the traffic.

Though we weren’t in the waiting area as long as last time, since I had no massive head wound to add to my problems this time, all human life was there again. A guy in a tracksuit, whose last wash was possibly when they poured water on his head at his christening, said down beside me at one point and yelled into his mobile “naoh, I’m in the fuckin’ hospital… yeah the burd was gettin’ up off the jacks & she tripped on her tracksuit…. naoh, yesterday, but dis mornin’ her foot was bloated….taxi? naoh, we rang a fuckin’ ambulance…”

In the middle of it all though, I was called to a consulting room and on the way I passed a woman sobbing uncontrollably in a corridor, and was reminded forcefully that, while I had had a Victorian-ladylike swoon, and smellyman and his burd had been too cheap to pay for a taxi, some people who arrive in an ambulance have graver problems, and that the poor person that this woman had accompanied will not be writing light-hearted posts this morning.

Anyway, now that I’ve killed the mood I’m going to stop. Whatever happened had nothing to do with my heart, and is not serious. I went back to the hospital, to cardiology at 8.30 this morning and had a complete check on my pacemaker, and I’ve an appointment later today with my own doctor to discuss my medication & whether it might have caused what happened, and I’m gonna use this opportunity to ask more about the whole depersonalised issue, & see if maybe some sort of counselling might help.

Just think. If I have to go to a Mentaller Doctor, you’ve all my reports about that to look forward to.

Dead Asleep

Today, January 11th is a first anniversary of sorts for me.

Next Thursday week, the 22nd, will be the first anniversary of the day I got my pacemaker fitted, and I am planning a series of posts in the days leading up to it telling the whole eight month story (“oh, bestill my beating heart!” I hear you cry, “more bloody posts about the bestilling of Tinman’s bloody heart”).

Anyway, today is the 31st birthday of a guy I work with, and who’s wife by co-incidence is a friend of Jo’s (people overseas like you, Laughykate, must think Ireland has a population of about twelve, since we all seem to know one another).

He's also my Insurance Broker

(Sorry, brief diversion here… when I was in Manhattan in February 2006 I was in bar sitting beside a Canadian couple, and one of the TVs was showing that day’s rugby match between Scotland and England. The guy noticed I was following the game intently, and asked were Ireland playing. “No,” I said, “though the referee is Irish, and funnily enough he’s a friend of mine”. The Canadian thought this was the most amazing thing ever, that he would travel from Canada to America, sit beside a bloke who’d flown from Ireland to America, and that a game on the TV from a fourth country,  Scotland, would feature a friend of the guy from Ireland. I didn’t bother telling him that things like that seem to happen to the Irish all the time).

Anywayagain, my workmate has had a far worse 2007/8 that I’ve had, since at the age of 29, with a six-week old baby, he collapsed and was found to have a brain tumour the size of a tennis ball. Most of this was removed, but he still had to undergo six months of chemo, but thankfully he has since had the all-clear.

Anywayagainagain, those of you who can do maths will have worked out that if he’s 31 today he was 30 this day last year, and his wife arranged a surprise party for him. A number of us headed out to the Queens in Dalkey from work, and Mrs Tin arrived with the car, everyone goo’d over his delightful baby son, and we had a great time. I had a few drinks, so I fell happily into bed and straight to sleep when I got home.

At the time I’d had an internal heart monitor inserted, and was due back in four days time to have it read. During the time I’d had it I hadn’t blacked-out, and was a bit concerned that they would find nothing.

But this night I suddenly burst awake, knowing that I’d had one in my sleep. I know that sounds weird, but I always knew by the violent way I woke that my body had been fighting it’s way back awake. I knew, because I felt really shaken, that this one had been especially bad.

And it was. The reason I have “18″ at the end of my blogname is that one night my heart stopped for eighteen seconds (try holding your breath, it’s an impressively long time).

January 11th one year ago was that night.

Ticker-ty Boo

Though she seems to like me..

I got my pacemaker checked this morning.

The fact that I have a pacemaker will come as a surprise to any of you who thought I picked the name “Tinman” because of some July Garland fetish, but there you go.

Someday, perhaps on the first anniversary, I’ll tell the whole story of the seven scary months it took from first being part-man, part-conscious to finally being part-man, part machine, but for the moment it is still a Tale for Which the World is Not Yet Prepared (or, I’m not, anyway).

I got it checked after six weeks, and from then on it’s twice a year, so it hasn’t been checked since February. When they put it in they said (a) that because I’m thin, it might be visible (and it is – if I hadn’t picked Tinman18 I could have gone for The Man With Three Moobs), and (b) that I might be able to feel it turning on – no kidding there, it blips so hard it stings sometimes. Because I can feel it, I know how often it comes on, and have been quietly alarmed at how often that seems to be.

So I was a teeny bit worried when I went back to Cardiology in Vincent’s this morning (the guy at the desk said “do you know the way?”. “God, yes,” I answered). There I met the lovely Áinle, who greeted me by name. (By the way, when I do write about all this I will be full of praise for the doctors, nurses and other healthcare people I met during the whole experience, they were absolutely wonderful).

They fixed me up

Áinle was the one who had checked my heart monitor last January, and who had read the print-out and then uttered those words you never want to hear in a hospital – “I just want to show these to someone”. It would be exaggerating to say she’d then run out of the room, but she certainly hadn’t slouched out, & she’d then returned with four doctors.

Anyway, this time was much more comforting. She hooked me up, turned on the machine, and then played with the settings to test the workings, so that I blipped, stopped and then blipped again at her command. I couldn’t really complain – after all, it’s been a long time since an attractive young blonde has toyed with my heart.

And she said I was fine. I asked about the number of times it seemed to be on, and she told me my own

Well, it works..

heart was doing 99 percent of the beating (back at work, my glass-half-empty boss said “so the pacemaker’s doing one percent? That’s a lot of beats”, but I was too pleased to rise to that).

So that’s my day. I’m still ticking over. Everything is ticker-ty boo.