This is an excerpt from the March 2012 edition of Popular Science:
Regar and the Central American patient proved that humans could survive, indeed thrive, with no pulse.....Rather than augmenting an existing heart...they would replace it entirely with two turbines, one to do the work of the left ventricle and one to do the work of the right.
Last March, they got their long awaited chance. A 55year old man named Craig Lewis showed up at the Texas Heart Institute with a case of amyloidosis....Lewis had slid form perfect health to death's door in less than a year.
The doctors attached him to a heart lung machine, and another device took over function of the kidneys. He kept going into cardiac arrest, though, and staying attached to the machines was no longer feasible in any case. "That's permissible for only 5 days, and he was on day 14,"
Cohn says...."There was no way he was going to survive a heart transplant; the amyloid would have attacked it."..... Cohn removed Lewis's disceased heart and replaced it with a pair of Heartmate II's.
Two days after surgery, Lewis sat up in bed and spoke with his family. An aspiring engineer, he even sketched ideas for how better to hook up the heart....The patients liver failed so bad that within 5 weeks, he lost consciousness and his family asked Cohn to witch the heart off. But he'd gotten those 5 weeks time to say goodbye. And he'd left a legacy.......
This excerpt is taken from a larger story on how they have already replaced in part or the total function of the heart with a small turbine. It is a continuous pump that produces no beat. The article talks about 2 people on this planet who walk around not with a thump thump of the heart rhythm but flatlined, with blood flow and pressure. Wild.
What moved me about this article was the time this "heart" gave to Craig Lewis. It is interesting how we live our lives and what amounts to a large part of our awaking time, is spent on focusing on moving time along. By not being at work or some function or with boredom. Or doing all the things that we MUST do and not spending time on whats important or worse yet, wasting time in the worst possible way. It is an interesting dynamic that when we are out of time, what would would give or do for just a few days or even hours more.
There have been many a philosophical tale or story devoted to what would you do in your final days and that notion usually brings a great swell of emotion. Depending on various factors some people would think to engage in extreme sports, skydiving or base jumping, or getting a Corvette. Nearly everyone would make it a priority contacting loved ones, cherished friends and reconnecting with people lost to time and commitments. What might you do dear reader?
