Beryl Bainbridge's heart attack worked wonders

It took a coronary to cure Beryl Bainbridge of her writers block. Now, she says, she is brimming with new-found energy - It wasn't until I was back in a hospital bed again that I learnt what had been happening to me and why. My children told me; the staff were too busy elsewhere. Apparently, while examining me, the doctors discovered that I'd had a heart attack, which prompted them to insert something called a stent into my heart - two, in fact. A stent is a tube planted temporarily into a vessel and can also be an instrument of torture. Whatever it is, I’m extremely grateful, for I no longer find it difficult to think of words and my energy has returned. Four or five days later, they sent me home with a mouthpiece and the threat of supplying me with an even larger machine to help me breathe. After one evening of sitting there with it clamped over my face, I thought: no, no, no. I didn’t use it again and have slept soundly ever since. Beryl Bainbridge at Wikipedia