DIARY: Ruminations, Occasional thoughts & happenings - as they arise
Meditation on Miss Nicotine - Plus a real Heartache - June 2002
Originally
this small video was meant to be sent to
friends and relatives by email - until I realised it would take quite a while to
download (and make me exceedingly unpopular).
Since then I have reduced the file size considerably, to a mere 152kb ....
(Film lasts 28secs. Uses Windows Media Player)
........ Apologies to the health conscious!
Meditation on Miss Nicotine
Miss
Nicotine and I have had a solid relationship for over half a
century.
Entrancing slut that she is, she has been my constant
companion, relieving moments of stress, joining with me in quiet moments
of contemplation over a cup of tea, rejoicing in party time, cognac
enhanced puffs - twining every cell of my body in loving embrace.
No
doubt she does not like being rejected, misses the fondling of her white
body as she is consumed by fire. But she has got to go! That's
the heartbreak of it. If she causes extra time in Intensive care she
delays vital heart surgery for hundreds of people.
I know about
such delay. I have been waiting nine months for a replacement aortic
valve - though I see now that the GB Government are open to reducing
the workload by sending people abroad. Pity this policy is new - I
would not have minded recovering in Paris with a bottle or two of fine
champagne and a pack of Gauloise at hand! Mademoiselle
Nicotine! Oh, La, la!)
LATER: Email sent to family & Friends 3rd July
2002
Intensive Care Party!
YiZ is all
invited!
Just heard from Royal
Victoria Hospital!
I am to have my chest sawed open and a carbon fibre
valve inserted into my heart on or around that day, 4 weeks
from now - provided I give up smoking over that period!
What a horrifying prospect! I've never had to give up fags before!
Do you think I will
make it? I dunno. Watch this space.
That's THIS
SPACE!
My God but that was
painful!
Pain such as one can hardly imagine - and nobody
told me to expect it! The operation, sawing through my chest bone, took place on 19 August 2002.
"Hello men!" I said to the pyjama clad men as I arrived in the ward.
"All you guys seem to have a zip down the front of
your chests!" Cheery ol' me!
Later, groaning in agony and clutching a pillow to my chest I wished I had not
said that..
However, a year later I am still alive. That's
got to be good!