"I am shocked, shocked..."

El Cabrero is about to hit the bird's road, to borrow a metaphor from Beowulf. I'm flying today to Italy for a week or so where the Spousal Unit has been studying Dante these days. I plan on doing some posting from abroad, but probably on an irregular schedule.

My travel plans were interrupted Wednesday evening, however. As I was exercising on a stationary bicycle, I started feeling woozy. Then I was shocked in the chest, which felt about like being kicked there.

As a martial artist, I am used to being kicked in the chest, but still it was disconcerting to experience this in the absence of a tangible human foot. I wondered what was up until I remembered the internal defibrillator that was installed there a few years ago and which hadn't done anything up till now. Over the next few minutes, it shocked me two more times.

I wasn't sure how serious it was, so I took a moment to compose myself in case it was The Big One and then set about practical things like calling 911, changing clothes, etc. During all this time, for some reason I took bizarre comfort in remembered lines of the divine Miss Emily Dickinson's death poems.

After a plethora of tests and a miserable 24+ hours, it looks like the machine mistook a fairly minor cardiac incident for a major one.

Game on!