I have a systolic murmur in my heart.
When the muscle of my heart clenches as part of the pumping action, one of the valves leaks very slightly. Medical people describe the sound of the heart beating as a lub dum sound. My heart makes a lub whh dum sound.
The irregularity was discovered when I was tiny. My family's doctor was a young woman who was full of all the latest medical knowledge that the mid 50s had to offer. She was the first person to hear the tell-tale sound of my systolic murmur. She heard it because she was using a new stethoscope. She said at the time that two years previously she would not have had the technology to be able to hear what was going on. She advised my parents not to worry at all, to forget all about it and to let me lead a normal, physically active life.
Which they did.
Which was why the discovery of the murmur during a routine examination whilst I was a student came as such a surprise to me. I spent a night in University College Hospital having the murmur investigated in the mid 1970s. They used the latest technology and inserted a fibre optic tube through an incision into a vein in my groin. They fed it through the pipes of my body until they could film the way the valve was malfunctioning. I was given a deep local anæsthetic. I felt nothing but was conscious throughout. Along with the doctors, I watched the monitor onto which the images from the fibre optic tube were displayed. I have seen my heart working.
The doctors told me it was nothing to worry about.
Many years later my parents and I compared notes and let each other know that we'd been keeping secrets from one another.
None of this explains the ache in my heart over the past few days.
It's been cold. It's been bright. As I drive to work, the sun is of a height now where I have to wear sunglasses most of the journey. The ground temperature was just -1°C at 08:45am this morning. It took 15 minutes to get the ice off the car windows so I could see out. But it was light most of the journey home. Getting there, getting there.
I passed on a survey which a number of friends and EJ readers completed.
I am just astonished at how many of my friends wear no underwear.