At 10 o'clock in a July evening in 2000 my wife found me dead on our kitchen floor. Being a resourceful woman she went next door for our neighbours, the husband being a cardio thoracic surgeon at Papworth Hospital and his lovely wife our local GP. Between them they got me ticking over again and with CPR kept enough oxygen circulating to prevent be becoming brain dead. For me it was quite boring, because I knew nothing about what was going on, saw no angels, bright lights or long tunnels.
I was fitted with an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator, courtesy of BUPA.
Some 12 years later the batteries ran out and I had new ones fitted at Blackpool Victoria Hospital. Now that experience was amusing. I was lying on the operating table, having had a local anesthetic, while the surgeon sliced into my chest, delved inside and hawked the ICD out. That was the point that I burst out laughing. The reason was that the surgeon had begun to operate on my chest with a ratchet screwdriver. In fact he was removing the screws that held the batteries in then used the screwdriver again to lock in the new batteries. I suspect there are many similar things happen in OR, but you are rarely awake to witness the event.
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John_Keegan
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Two weeks after the event my business partner acquainted Maureen, my wife, with the value of the insurance that the Company (of which he and I were sole owners) carried on my life. In July 2000 that was £2m + £4m Key Employee Insurance. In retrospect I think I am glad that Maureen had no idea of what she was throwing away by not simply going back to bed. However, in September of this year we will have been married for 57 years so something must be working OK.
Wow what a story. You couldn't make it up could you? I am so glad you are still with us and in the land of the living. I actually have as a neighbour Esther Ransom's son who apparently is a consultant at our hospital! x
It seems that you had a little more success with the snap on tools than your recent struggle with the oxygen cylinder carrier,lucky with the neighbours though,what were those lottery numbers again by the way?
Many years ago my husband, sitting in his easy chair, let out a strange sound and "died". I screamed for my son, "dad died". We were anguishing and beside ourselves when hubby opened his eyes and asked, "What is all the screaming about"? We stared in awe. Quick to the emergency room where he had more episodes of going "dead" in the middle of a sentence; coming awake and not a clue about what had just happened to him. I actually saw his toes curl during one event. Son and I kept thinking he was lost. They gave him a pacemmaker right there in the emergency room. He survived so many health issues through a 20 year period.
Just to add a conclusion. Seven months later we sold our house in Cambridge and bought one in the Lune Valley in Lancashire. When we moved we did, of course, part from our wonderful medical neighbours Samer and Sandy Nashef. However, just to prove that the sun can continue to shine on the righteous we discovered that our next door but two neighbour was the Rt Rev Gordon Banks Suffragan Bishop of Whitby (Retd). Despite he being Anglican, and I a Catholic, Gordon promised to give me a good liturgical send of in the event of my repeating demise.
It is now 17 years later and Gordon and I both continue to grace this sceptred isle with our presence.
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They could easily have been undertakers! 
xx
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