Friday 28 June, 11:00 am

I’m sitting in a hospital bed, wired up and waiting. Last evening I was admitted, via Emergency, and today they’re going to give me a pacemaker.

I’m not scared, not like when I was on the boat out to see the iceberg—that was only a week ago! But I am nervous, which is only n natural, I suppose. The doctors and nurses are all so matter of fact, talking about processes and procedures—and the things that might—but likely won’t—go wrong. Pierced arteries and punctured lungs, that sort of thing. Nothing to worry about, really.

It was weird. I’ve had a couple of wobbles, recently—feeling a bit faint or light-headed, having to stop to steady myself, or needing a breather when walking back up from the garden. But this was so sudden. I was watching highlights from Have I Got News For You, a very funny satirical news show, and we had eaten in front of the tv. Sally had gone to the washroom. The next thing I remember was a crash, and I was sitting in the chair shaking crazily, tray and plate and cutlery on the floor. It came out nowhere. In a heartbeat, as they say. Thank all the gods that I was not driving, or out in the public domain somewhere.

I made it to the bedroom under my own steam, albeit tentatively, and lay down. Sally called 911 and the paramedics came. They were polite, professional, knowledgeable, and efficient. I found out later that they had just started a 12-hour shift and I was their first call-out, so I’d “got them when they were fresh”. It was just after 6:30, which ironically was when I was supposed to be chairing a meeting of the College of Paramedics of PEI, a regulatory group of which I am a public member, appointed by the government. It was tremendous to watch them at work and I got insight into what ‘Standards of Practice’ look like, in practice. Thank you Pat and Tom.

My only sadness was that I didn’t hear the siren, so they either didn’t turn it on or those ambulances are well sound-proofed!

At the QEH I was wheeled into Emergency and seen by a variety of RNs and doctors, who asked questions and prodded and poked, putting me in a Johnny Coat on a bed in a screened-off ‘room’. The consensus seemed to be that I’d had some sort of arrhythmic episode, not a full-on heart attack but sufficiently serious that a pacemaker was warranted. My trip to Vancouver next week, to take my daughter to see The Rolling Stones, has evidently been thwarted. Ah well. I’ve seen them twice already.

Things were quiet for a couple of hours. A patient in the ‘room’ next to me was wheeled away, and various orderlies swept and swabbed. Two police officers walked in with a tall, thin woman who looked and sounded distraught. She was placed in the next ‘room’, and after the police left tried to discharge herself. The RN in charge stood firm, noting that the patient was in under the Mental Health Act, and that the Emergency Ward was a better place than the Secure Room. The lady was still mumbling and cursing when a fancy wheelchair arrived, and I was wheeled away to the Progressive Care Ward of Unit 1. It was just after 0200.

I slept well, considering, before being woken at 0730 to have blood taken. This being PEI, the nurse said, “Are you Sally’s husband?” I agreed to this fact, and it turned out she—the nurse—was a granddaughter of a woman Sally had known well, but who passed away a year or so ago. We live in a small community.

Breakfast came but I didn’t get anything. NBM says the card at the end of the bed, ‘Nil by mouth’. I’m fasting pre-surgery, I guess. Ironically, this morning I was supposed to meet friends for coffee, to have my irregular treat of a latte and a pain au chocolat. C’est la vie.

Another nurse appeared and asked me a clipboard full of questions. One was whether I’d ever had malignant hypothermia or something; I didn’t understand the question but picked up on the word, and told her the story of falling through the ice into the Arctic Ocean in Pangnirtung. She looked at me like I was an alien life form. After she left, another woman came, apparently one of only three cardiac sonographers on PEI. She wired me up, differently, and did an ultrasound ECG of my heart. Then my finger was pricked again, sugars a bit high at 6.7, and now it’s 1205 and I’m still here, wired and waiting.