Looking forwards and backwards

Early next Monday--the 30th of June--I'm going to drive across Austin to Seton Hospital. There, I'll have a device called an ICD installed in my chest. The reason for the procedure is to correct an arhythmia in my heart that could have killed me, had I not been told to go to a hospital by my doctor while I was on vacation in New Mexico last month.

I look forward to having this gizmo, which serves the same purpose as the paddles you see on the doctor shows on TV ("Clear!!!"), because it'll monitor my heart and give me a gentle (I hope) zap if anything goes wrong. 

I'm going to try to piece together a narrative about how things got to this point while I recover and get used to the idea of having a piece of technology a little bigger than a 9 Volt battery in my chest. The future looks good with these devices, so I want speculate about what the future might hold. 

Until then, I'm taking the weekend off.