Kickstart My Heart

I love gadgets. Buying them helps fill the void where my soul used to be. I sometimes wonder which one is my favourite. Is it the noise-cancelling headphones that cocoons me when travelling, or my iPad that allows me to watch movies wherever I am, or my Ring doorbell that lets me know who’s calling? Basically, the items that help me avoid interacting with other people.

But the best one must be the implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) that sits in my chest. It’s an incredible piece of technology. It can control my heart rate, deliver life-saving shock treatment, and constantly monitor and upload my vital signs. All I need it to do is return voicemails, and it’s perfect.

An example: A few years ago, I was lying on a bed in the resus room of an Accident and Emergency department in the Midlands. My heart had been racing along at 180bpm for several hours now and, quite frankly, it was getting boring. They’d given me drugs to bring my heart rate down, but apparently my heart is too hardcore for that.

The next option is to get the paddles out and get some cardioversion going – basically electrically slapping your heart around to get it into normal rhythm. It is not in my top ten things to do. I had it performed once and, even though I was sedated, the swearing could be heard at the other end of the hospital.

But we were in luck. There was somebody in the A&E with the big laptoppy thing (possibly not the correct technical term) that programs my ICD. Maybe they could use that to put the brakes on my heart and bring it down to something sensible. But it might deliver a shock if it couldn’t control it through pacing. So an anaesthetist was called.

What then followed was my least favourite conversation since I showed my wife and kids The Princess Bride, and they said, ‘It wasn’t all that.’

‘We’re going to try some treatment to bring Dave’s heart rate down, which could involve his ICD giving him a treatment shock,’ the cardiologist said to the anaesthetist. ‘So we’re going to need you to sedate him.’

‘I can’t do that,’ said the anaesthetist.

‘Pardon?’ the cardiologist and I replied together.

‘I’m not going to do that.’

‘I can’t carry out treatment that may cause the patient pain if I can’t give them some kind of sedation,’ said the cardiologist, aghast. ‘Why can’t you do that?’

‘Have you seen his blood pressure?’ the anaesthetist replied. ‘If I sedate him, I don’t know if I’d be able to bring him back.’

Even though they’d given me medication and even tipped the bed so I was head down like a shitty fairground ride to get the blood to flow, my blood pressure had bottomed out.

‘Oh,’ said the cardiologist. ‘I see.’

The cardiologist turned to me. ‘OK, Dave. We’re going to have to do this with you fully conscious. You good with that?’

I don’t know if I’ve described when an ICD delivers a shock, but it’s like being kicked in the chest by a horse while being electrocuted. I once had it happen twenty times in the space of two hours. That’ll make your eyes water.

‘No problem,’ I replied with a polite smile. Because, bloody hell, I’m British.

They connected me to the laptoppy thing (it’s all wireless! I’ve never felt more like a cyborg) and slowly brought my heart rate down. I don’t know how it works. There might be a big knob they turn from “Stupid Heart” to “Normal Heart”. I was home the next day.

I bring this up because last week I received a phone call from the hospital.

‘How are you feeling?’ the nurse asked.

‘It’s funny you’ve called,’ I replied, ‘but my heart fluttered for about thirty seconds, and then it passed at around 9 o’clock last night.’

‘We know.’

LADS, THE ICD CAUGHT MY HEART DOING SOMETHING STUPID, TOLD IT TO STOP BEING STUPID, AND THEN CALLED THE HOSPITAL AND GRASSED IT UP.

While it regularly uploads data to the medical team through a device I have next to my bed, I didn’t know it could go freestyle.

Unfortunately, it had to tell my heart off a few times over the last few days, so this week the medical team decided it’s necessary to put me back on amiodarone.

Amiodarone is very, very good at controlling arrhythmias. It’s also very, very toxic. So they only give it when they really need to. It can cause blindness, liver and kidney damage, and – if you’re exposed too much to the sun – turn your skin blue so you look like Commander Stone from the TV show that only my brother and I remember, Jason of Star Command.

(Thank God for the internet, because we’ve met nobody else who knew what we were talking about when we brought it up. For a while, I was sure it was some kind of joint hallucination he and I had experienced.)

The last time I was on the drug, it completely wrecked my thyroid, so now I have to take medication to control it. But for some weird reason, if you have hypothyroidism, your NHS prescriptions are free. Being a dad, my first thought was, “Well, it saves a few quid, at least.”

And at least I get to buy some more hats. More people should wear hats.

So, yeah, it wasn’t the news I wanted to hear, and I imagine as the months and years go on, my heart will make more attempts to do the Electric Boogaloo, and I need to be ready for that.

But I’m glad that little bugger in my chest is there to quietly tell my body not to be an idiot.

That’s my favourite gadget.

Unless Apple releases something really cool.