At the airport yesterday I saw a new book on Professor Chris Barnard by James-Brent Styan: ‘Heartbreaker’.

It’s fifty years since the world’s first heart transplant and the famous surgeon and playboy is in the news again, as people use the anniversary to look back afresh . .

A while ago I had found Aitch’s 1983 diary. Her entries to record her overtime as a cardiovascular perfusionist assisting during heart ops had abbreviations likes “palliative VSD 1.5hrs; MVR 1.5hrs; CVG”.

One of her entries in December was ’17h00 Wed 14 Dec Farewell for CNB, Nurses Lounge, Clarendon House’. I knew that CNB meant Christiaan Neethling Barnard as she worked with him at the time. She would run the heart-lung machine to oxygenate the blood while he and the other surgeons worked on the patient’s heart.

I had time before my flight so I thought I wonder if they have…