My experience after 9 months with a defibrillator pacemaker

 I was worried a lot before last June when I had the surgery to install it because I didn't want to feel like a robot but instead this actually feels more natural than my life before at this point. This is because I had an irregular heartbeat my whole life and this feels now more normal than the rest of my life. You really don't notice it there once the incision heals up. It is about the same size as the old flip open cell phones if they were flipped close that they install usually between your left clavicle and your rib cage (my wife says it's much smaller like a pocket watch now). They first create a flesh pocket for it to live in. And they connect up to entrances to your heart at the same time at the same place so it is all very efficient indeed. They took me into sort of a UFO room with very advanced technology similar to the room I was taken into 5 years ago for a burst appendix laparoscopic operation. You sort of feel like you are inside a UFO in that room simply because the technology is incredibly advanced at this point.

They gave me something they called "Joy juice" then pulled a blanket over my face after putting oxygen tubes up my nose. IT was maybe the best meditation I have ever experienced in my life but then I'm a person who is a very contemplative person and the doctor said I was the best patient for this he had ever had. You are conscious for this operation because they need to you to tell them if something is wrong but you are not your normal self on "joy juice" at all but it was a pretty amazing experience. The scariest part was waiting in a hospital room for them to come get me for this operation but as soon as they gave me joy juice I was fine until I came off this stuff in the hospital recovery room and then at times I felt some pain but not much. They kept me in the hospital for only 24 hours at most. Later my other cardiologist said he was very worried last spring of 2020 that I was going to die before the pacemaker was put in but he didn't tell me this until fall of 2020 which also makes sense.

So far, for me, it's sort of like my health was about 20 years ago. I can see why many people who get pacemakers in their 60s and 70s live until 90 or 100 years of age because I was 72 when I had this installed.