The lady might have had a difficult decision, but I have no problems at all. It was me or the piggy. Actually, I know the slaughterhouse owner who provided my new valve … he is a good friend and tells me the pig was eaten long ago.

Interestingly, they harvest about 200 pigs from the normal slaughter line, to get one valve. If the valves are not used, they go in the bin, so at least my little piggy did not die in vain.

View full article here

Apologies for my lack of knowledge in the exact procedure you've had in this dept, and I've no wish to pry gratuitously, but are there significant risks of complications or 'rejection'?

Bravo btw.

The reason they use a pig valve is that, biologically, it is inert. Rejection is not an issue. The only problem is that it wears out ... after 15-20 years, I have to go back and get another one. That is a problem I am happy to live with, against a previous life expectancy of about six months.

As in holey??

Judging from your output since the Op I take it that all is going well Sir North?

As to ...
'I'm a vegetarian so it was a difficult choice, but it was a life or death one.'

Pigs are OK but, frankly, I would have killed a 'sports therapist' and used her valves. Then again that says a lot about chance and healthy living PR (see Jim Fixx).

To quote Leary ...

I'm gonna open up my own place. Open my own restaurant and get away from you people. I'm gonna open up a restaurant with two smoking sections; Ultra and Regular, ok? And we're not gonna have any tables or any chairs or any napkins. None of that pussy shit. Just a big wide open black space. And all we're gonna serve is raw meat, right on the bone! And only men are going to eat there, naked men, sitting around a big giant camp fire, and no men's room either. You have to piss, you mark your territory like a wolf! And if some guy has a heart attack from eating too much meat, fuck him, we throw him in the fire! More meat for the other meat-eaters! Yeah!

And so say we all.

As in shit ... typo fixed!

I remember an article in the Dail Mail about some patients' tastes and abilities changing to those of the donors as a result of transplanted tissue but I doubt they'd turn a piano playing porker into heart valves and bacon. At least not all at once - perhaps start by turning a hind leg into a ham and have someone sitting next to The Empress to operate the pedals.

Keep on with the good work of getting better.

Marvellous, and the bonus is the valve lasts longer than the Euro

At this rate, a toilet roll in a dysentery clinic has a longer life span than the euro.

Well, I am occasionally heard breaking out into a shrill squealing!

We are all delighted at your progress. Keep it up!

What, I wonder, would be the religious/ideological scruples for a Muslim, offered the same procedure.
Would intimate internal contact with the pig make him become "haram"?

Or do they have the equivalent of Jesuits to argue around the point?

Was eaten long ago you say?......

Nowt vain about a bacon butty..........



The only question worth asking is ketchup or HP?


I'm sure I also heard somewhere that a leetle beet of pig in you has a reduced risk of blood clots too.......not sure though....

troo ... the foundation of British civilisation.

Yeah, I was worried you'd come out of 'ossi and join Caroline Lucas's lot and start pontificating about saving the world cos were gonna burn up, it's all mankinds fault!! Plus.....shoutin' that, 13 and a half years of Labour done Britain good innit, and that, you now luv the EU and wanted to have a luv child with Barroso or summat.......................errrrrrrr ...........now lets not get giddy here.

Great to have you back, if not firing on V8 mode, two cylinders is good for now!

In principle, they need only one inconsistency in one of their sacred texts to be able to construct a valid argument to reach any desired conclusion.

Given the hideously unlettered stone-age provenance of their texts, finding such a convenient contradiction shouldn't be too difficult.

May pigs be upon them all.