A few weeks ago my ex-wife had me over for dinner on my birthday. And her card for me read Ever notice, the older we get, the more were like computers? We start out with lots of memory and drive, then we eventually become outdated, crash at odd moments, acquire errors in our systems, and have to have our parts replaced.

She proved prescient, since sometimes I get light-headed when I walk. So my doctor had arranged a series of tests. One of them involved my wearing a heart monitor one weekend. When a couple of weeks later, in mid-September, I met with the cardiologist for the followup and he recommended a pacemaker implant: Apparently my heart periodically stops beating for three seconds and his concern was that it would at some point forget to do so for five seconds, causing me to keel over and break a hip.

And my luck held once again, for the very next day his office called me with an appointment for day surgery in early October.

On Oct. 6 I went under the knife. Putting in a pacemaker is not a major procedure (I was in and out of the hospital in six hours), since they place it just under the skin below the left clavicle and thus dont have to cut into any muscle. And I am glad Im right-handed, since I will be restricted in the use of my left arm for as much as six weeks. There was only one hiccup, when I took the law into my own hands but more about that in my next column on Nov. 17.

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Senior Living: Healthy attitude, healthy living and luck go a long way - National Post