Well, it has been long. I updated the blog at the end of last year, but not for English readers. As I told on my last post, I got this job, that I still hold, and I still need the money. While I have left aside my personal programming, at the least it has helped to me to acquire some practical discipline and experience on a professional level.
And then, I almost died. Relax, it was just "almost". Basically, my heart had a congenital disorder that caused me an episode of arrythmia, a circumstance that has been my most painful experience ever, on the 2nd of December. At first, I thought I was having a heart failure, and after I warned my mother, we called emergency services. While I waited, I spent very, very bad moments. Finally, the ambulance arrived and they took me to the hospital. There I got various injections that caused me to vomit, which finally ceased the episode. And I spent the next three weeks and a half in the hospital.
Maybe some readers may thank me if I comment that, in Spain, health care is heavily taxed (social insurance, in other words) and I didn't have to pay a penny for this long internment (except what I have paid on taxes, of course). But, as a drawback, wait times can be eternal. I wasn't exactly sick, but rather at risk of suffering other attack that cold have led me to my grave. So, I needed to be performed a cardiac catheterization, where you take a very thin tube to heal people without having to cut their flesh. But, unluckily for me, the 6th and the 8th of December, both feasts in Spain, made a kind of holiday week last year, so it was the worst time to expect things to be done fast. So, I had to wait for a week for this operation, every second outside the shower with a telemetry to check I didn't suffer other attack.
Results? Half good. Although a vessel susceptible to cause tachycardia was indeed found and burnt (the medical team checked it because they artifically caused it), the same case of arrythmy that sent me to the hospital couldn't be reproduced. So, doctors suggested me to get an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD), and my bad luck wanted that there were reforms to install new material in the hospital that stopped me from having an MRI.
Why? Because in the future, the ICD, as it has a magnetic field, will interfere in the case I need one. So, I had to wait again, for a week and a half this time. Aside from being convalescent, I was pretty impatient at the start, but I resigned to my fate. Finally, I had the MRI and, finally lucky, I was implanted the ICD the next day. It was a short operation, but I spent that whole morning sleeping and I don't remember anything after I lay down on the operation table.
Maybe some readers may thank me if I comment that, in Spain, health care is heavily taxed (social insurance, in other words) and I didn't have to pay a penny for this long internment (except what I have paid on taxes, of course). But, as a drawback, wait times can be eternal. I wasn't exactly sick, but rather at risk of suffering other attack that cold have led me to my grave. So, I needed to be performed a cardiac catheterization, where you take a very thin tube to heal people without having to cut their flesh. But, unluckily for me, the 6th and the 8th of December, both feasts in Spain, made a kind of holiday week last year, so it was the worst time to expect things to be done fast. So, I had to wait for a week for this operation, every second outside the shower with a telemetry to check I didn't suffer other attack.
Results? Half good. Although a vessel susceptible to cause tachycardia was indeed found and burnt (the medical team checked it because they artifically caused it), the same case of arrythmy that sent me to the hospital couldn't be reproduced. So, doctors suggested me to get an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD), and my bad luck wanted that there were reforms to install new material in the hospital that stopped me from having an MRI.
Why? Because in the future, the ICD, as it has a magnetic field, will interfere in the case I need one. So, I had to wait again, for a week and a half this time. Aside from being convalescent, I was pretty impatient at the start, but I resigned to my fate. Finally, I had the MRI and, finally lucky, I was implanted the ICD the next day. It was a short operation, but I spent that whole morning sleeping and I don't remember anything after I lay down on the operation table.
But I still had to spend even Christmas in the hospital and I didn't come back at home until the 26th. As you guess, I was on sick leave and I still spent the first month of this year resting. So, I am now a cyborg, but not of the cool kind from science-fiction, but actually weaker than the common man. Here you have some x-rays of various ICDs inside of people's thorax. Also, I have had to get used to this lump under my left armpit and to the fact that it keeps the object that could save my life under my flesh.
But, you see, you sometimes get over it. I had to admit that I have a chronic illness after a lifetime of not having anything remotely dangerous. I need medication, but as I have already mentioned, taxes help a lot and I only have to pay a small fraction of a cost that was initially low to start with. Once again, thanks to social insurance I received a communicator that sends periodically information of how my ICD and my heart are doing, along with a neat user's guide.
And still, I am happy that my only weakness is an equipment by electromagnetic induction, I could have died or become pretty crippled. So, after returning to work, I just continued living. By the way, we are testing this new schedule that will give us more free afternoons, so I think I can return to my personal projects.
But that will have to wait, because there are other things that will come down. Bye!
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