December 7, 1941 was the day Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, launching the US into World War II.
December 7, 1941 was the day my Dad, then 8 years old, had his first surgery.
December 7, 2015 was the day I had mine: the implanting of an Internal Cardioverter Defibrillator.
The ICD – call it a defibrillator, a defib, The Little Box That Lives In My Chest, or The Reason I Have That Little Scar Below My Collarbone – is still there, connected to my heart with a couple electrical leads, monitoring the situation. If my heart rate ever drops way too low, or accelerates way too high, its mode switches from MONITOR to ZAP, delivering an electric shock to reset my heart, which will ideally put things back to normal.
It doesn’t shout “CLEAR!” before delivering that shock.
I found that out for sure about a year and a half ago, when my heart rate suddenly skyrocketed one spring morning – new personal record: 261 BPM – and because this little box does exactly what it’s supposed to do, I’m here to tell that story.
That little zap last year barely even affected the little guy’s battery life.
So Happy Defibriversary to you, Little Box That Lives In My Chest. Here’s to many more years of MONITOR, with as little ZAP as possible.
Further reading:
My original blog about my diagnosis and ICD: My Heart May Or May Not Go On
My blog from March of last year describing that time I got the ZAP: My Heart And The Real World