A Good Heart These Days Is Hard To Find

So, how was your Christmas? Your New Year? Want to know about mine?

Remember last time my saying that I'd be back on 27 December unless something major happened - in the meantime. By that, I had meant that I would have made a reappearance if, let's say, a small nuclear device had taken out Pollensa on Christmas Day - something of that nature. It had of course been my intention to return on 27 December, but something did happen. Not quite as I'd envisaged. Was your Christmas Eve pretty hectic? Shooting around for last-minute presents? Stocking up on the sherry and mince pies? There was my own list of things to do. After the 9am appointment, there was the rest of the day for all those last-minute bits and pieces. That wasn't how the rest of the day went. Want to know what happened? There was that appointment. It was a stress test. Treadmill. Cardiologist. I had a heart attack.

It was a Division Two attack of an Aldershot v. Macclesfield nature; it wasn't in the Premier League massive of a Chelsea and Man U, but attack it still was, though it took till Boxing Day for a doctor to actually state that it was. By then, I had been dripped, glycerined, glucosed, painkillered, multi-sucker-contacted to a monitor, punctured with warfarin, "electro"-ed several times a day and had, alarmingly, almost bled to death when the drip became disconnected.

Heart attack. Fuck me. What a pain. Literally. Except it sounds worse than it was. There are degrees and types captured under this one collective-style term. One of the numerous and anonymous doctors to have passed through my consciousness in the past few days said that there is an issue with terminology. Great. I am reassured. I suffered an attack of semantics. Nevertheless, they stuck this catheter into my arm and then into my heart. I'm told that lethal injections used for execution and those for committing euthanasia create a burning pain in the arm. I guess the local anaesthetic they use for performing an angiogram is just a milder form. And once it was all done, my body was zapped and there was more fleetingly stinging heat. I expected to see a blue glow around me as though the Doctor's sonic screwdriver was in the process of semi-vaporising me. All I had to show for it in the end was a pin-prick in the wrist where the catheters had entered; oh and the movie on the surgeon's screen. I wouldn't recommend it. It was just a lot of grey and some darker things that looked like worms wriggling about.

It was the second night in the intensive care unit at the Palmaplanas clinic that really did it. This was the night after the angiogram. The previous one I had asked a nurse if I was indeed in a hospital. Yes, she said, which you would of course expect her to say. Oh, because I thought it was a factory. All these people, the bright lights into the early morning, the noise. She eventually gave me a sleeping-pill and then I was woken up again two hours later. But the previous nights of broken or little sleep climaxed that night after the op. I started to hallucinate and to have fantasy half-awake half-asleep visions. I was convinced that it was a factory. All those people. It was the "Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers", or human experiments; I had been reading James Patterson's "When The Wind Blows". The others in the ICU cubicles were not there because of insurance-company authorisation but because they had security clearance. And I would tug at the contacts to make the machine ring out. In alarm mode, it sounded like wind chimes. It was a pretty noise above the shouts of some of those who had received security clearance - more fool they - and the drone of the air-conditioning.

Finally, I was rescued and taken to a room with a large window and - oh joy, after a week of bed washes, the vague smell of piss and ever more greasy hair - a shower. I stood under it for twenty minutes. Didn't move. And grinned. I wasn't connected to any more machines. There were no more plasters. Someone had said to me that maybe it was the best Christmas present I could have had. Maybe they were right. And it had, after all, only been a minor attack.


QUIZ
Last time - Laura Veirs, "To The Country". Go here, and click the MP3 link to listen:
http://stereogum.com/archives/mp3/new-laura-veirs-to-the-country_004728.html. Today's title - a cracker from a reconstructed ex-punk.

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)


Index for December 2008

Agatha Christie - 11 December 2008
Beaches - 17 December 2008
Building licences - 18 December 2008, 19 December 2008, 20 December 2008, 22 December 2008
Bus station - 14 December 2008
Cala Ratjada hotel tragedy - 18 December 2008, 19 December 2008, 20 December 2008, 22 December 2008
Catalan - 14 December 2008, 18 December 2008
Christmas 2008 - 20 December 2008
Classified ads - 9 December 2008
Corruption - 8 December 2008, 12 December 2008
Dictionaries - 1 December 2008
Digital television - 14 December 2008
Dogs - 10 December 2008
Driving - 5 December 2008
El Gordo - 23 December 2008
Environment - 7 December 2008
ETA - 18 December 2008
GOB - 7 December 2008
Golf - 4 December 2008, 5 December 2008, 15 December 2008, 22 December 2008
Hotels - 7 December 2008, 15 December 2008, 18 December 2008, 19 December 2008, 20 December 2008, 22 December 2008
IB3 - 12 December 2008
Language - 13 December 2008, 14 December 2008, 18 December 2008
Local democracy - 8 December 2008
Lottery - 23 December 2008
Mayors - 1 December 2008, 8 December 2008, 22 December 2008
Music - 21 December 2008
Pedestrianisation - 13 December 2008
Playa de Muro - 2 December 2008, 22 December 2008
Police - 5 December 2008
Puerto Pollensa associations - 9 December 2008, 10 December 2008
Rafael Nadal - 14 December 2008
Real Mallorca - 4 December 2008, 10 December 2008, 12 December 2008
Restaurants - 3 December 2008
Sand - 17 December 2008
Scandal - 1 December 2008, 16 December 2008
Season 2009 - 6 December 2008
Social tourism - 4 December 2008
Son Bosc - 5 December 2008, 22 December 2008
Spanishness - 3 December 2008, 13 December 2008, 21 December 2008
Sports personality - 16 December 2008
Television - 12 December 2008
Tour operators - 6 December 2008
Tourism - 4 December 2008, 6 December 2008, 7 December 2008, 18 December 2008
Tourism promotion - 11 December 2008, 13 December 2008
Town halls - 8 December 2008, 19 December 2008
Weather - 16 December 2008, 17 December 2008
Websites - 2 December 2008
Winter tourism - 15 December 2008, 16 December 2008