Herby

Yesterday my wife mentioned, pointedly, that I had not posted anything on this here blog thing for a while (okay, since May), and asked me why. I replied that I had nothing to say.  “All my stories have been told,” I said. The look she gave me was – well, shall we say, skeptical.

Today, however, while thinking about something else altogether, I thought of a story not told, at least not here.

In a posting last fall (“A Name by Any Other Rose,” September 25, 2018) I mentioned that because my wife tends to name everything, I occasionally give names to various inanimate objects of my own.

In 2007, after having experienced what is called a “silent” heart attack (that is, one I knew nothing about because I never felt a thing), the medical types decided to implant a pacemaker/defibrillator in my chest. I like to joke with people that I can’t say "pacemaker/defibrillator," so I call it "Herby."

How I chose the name is simply that after the surgery, while I was lying in my hospital bed thinking about having a device in my chest to regulate my cardiac rhythms, it occurred to me that if you took the word HEARTBEAT and started leaving some of the letters out here and there, you would end up with:  HE R BE.

And that’s how my ICD Herby got his name. I suppose it's possible that my natural creativity was enhanced to some degree by the very enjoyable effects of a cocktail of morphine, Valium, and Versed I had been given, but I like to think I have a flair for whimsy.

It also helps me understand how people become addicted to drugs.