The procedure, as I say, was to, to do a catheter first and then to, having determined exactly what was going on electrically, to implant a pacemaker. The operation took 3 hours. Or the whole procedure took 3 hours, which was an hour and a bit longer than they had told us it would be. It’s a tense time, you’re sitting there in, in, in the dark in the ward with every thing else going on around you but not knowing quite what was happening with your child. And, and then suddenly there they are back up. Groggy and fine, he, hed had an operation at about five, well he came up at about five thirty. He responds to anaesthetic by being quite nauseous for the first few [hours] and so he kept throwing up which wasn’t pleasant. And about nine thirty in the evening he was sent down to have another x-ray to check that there wasn’t water on the lungs and he decided he was strong enough to walk himself down which was quite something. So we walked down and there were three men in there, well actually I suppose I don’t know how old they were but they looked like they were quite ill and elderly sitting in their pyjamas in wheelchairs. One of them was too unwell to have a pacemaker and the other two had had pacemakers and the four of them all sat looking at each other and just sort of disbelief that there was this little child who’d just had a pacemaker put in. And he of course thinks that that’s the age you have a pacemaker put in. So he was a bit surprised to see all these men. He didn’t, he, he found that was exhausting and we had to get a wheelchair to take him back up afterwards.

And he had, he, he still couldn’t settle his stomach so in the end we had to give him intravenously anti-nausea drugs. And I was asleep on the floor, dozing on the floor by his cot and at about 6.30 in the morning in a room with two, two or three babies in cots and then older children as well, I heard him stir and I could feel that hed come through. And in fact he leapt off the bed or climbed down from the bed and came down and said ‘Come on mummy, let’s go. And I said ‘[son’s name], everybody else is asleep, we don’t want to wake them all up. So well have to, I’ll have to read to you. So well have to cuddle up on the bed and just read to each other quietly until it’s time to get up.

And when the consultant did her ward round at lunch time I said ‘What do we have to do to leave?’ So within 24 hours we were at home having had a clear x-ray that afternoon.

And his recovery period after that, what was that like?

Well I asked them when he could go back to school. The operation had been on a Thursday, on a Friday, sorry, and they said well he could go back on Monday if the school are happy with it. But the school were not happy with it. The school were concerned that until the stitches were out there was a danger of infection or being knocked and they didn’t want to take that responsibility. So he went back to school 10 days after the operation when the stitches had been taken out by our GP. In a, it was painless. And hes kept them in a bottle and he proudly shows people what his stitches look like.

He has always avoided anything involving stamina. So he was a reluctant sportsman. He wouldn’t, he wouldn’t really join in football games. I started an after school football club on Friday after school and just let them play in the park to encourage him to play with other children. But hed be up the far field climbing a tree rather than joining in and he, he, now he has the energy to run around after his friends and do it, so it’s, it’s improved his quality of life enormously. He went skiing within 3 weeks of having the pacemaker operation for the first time in his life. And he certainly couldn’t have done that before the operation.

So to see a child afterwards have energy and as I say pink cheeks and big eyes whether hes, was a normal boy and very active and not paying attention and not concentrating and whether turning 7 has changed that or whether it’s the pacemaker hes, just hes concentrating. Hes just a whole new boy. Cycling all over the place, just living life to the full.

In terms of her daily life of having a pacemaker there is absolutely no difference to it at all, nothing. I think theres a handful of things that she can’t do which is like bungee jumping and things like that, things that she probably wouldn’t be doing anyway. Mobile phones, that’s something else, just to be careful with the usage of mobile phones, that shes using it in the opposite side from where her pacemaker is. Sort of going on holiday, things like that, sort of, you know, going through the scanning things at the airport and, but you’re given a card and that just says that she is the wearer of a pacemaker and you just show that and theres, you know, theres no problems and things with that.

So you would never know. I forget about it, you know. And she calls it ‘Pacey’ so it’s, you know, you normally say to her ‘What’s Pacey doing today?’ and shell say hes sleeping. So, you know, it’s, it’s a joke, you know and that, you know, we have fun about it, not jokes, we have fun about it and, you know, we, we speak about it now and again. You know, ‘What’s he doing?’ or, or if shes really upset about something or throwing a temper tantrum or something I might say something like ‘You’ll get Pacey, you know, hell have to start working’ or whatever, you know. So, but, no, it makes no difference and you, you can feel it. It’s just, it’s, it’s really very, very small, it’s one of the smallest pacemakers in the world that she has, well is actually the smallest one in the world that she has.

It’s fitted down, down at the bottom at the sort of the left hand side of her body and if you put your, shes got a small scar obviously where they inserted it and you can feel, you can just sort of, if you put your hand round, round her tummy there you can feel the shape of it. It’s not actually in her, in a small little bag like a, like a, a, just a little material bag and it just staves any allergy or anything to her body because metal against her body, it’s in a little bag. And she was very fortunate to have that done I think there was somebody in, in theatre before her had an allergy and they’d bought these bags in specially, these little net bags in specially to put pacemaker in. So because they’d fitted this child with one they just decided that they were going to put [my daughters] in one too. So shes, not everybody’s got that but it’s in a, it’s in a little bag. But it makes no difference to her life at all.