[geeks] Health Update

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Wed, 12 Nov 2003, Michael Schiller wrote:

<much heart bugginess snipped>

Good lord, man.  I'm glad you're still with us.

> Normally I have high blood pressure, but after the event in the ER
> they had to give me drugs to get my BP up to the normal level, now
> THAT was something different for me!

Ack.  I -hate- BP medicine.  Everytime I've been put on something that
can affect my BP (either as an intended effect or a side-effect) it goes
way overboard.  I think I mentioned about a year ago when the psychs put
me on Efexxor and my bp shot up to 180/120.

> The doc has signed me up with a company to do monthly remote monitoring
> of the pacemaker, and they're sending me a pickup unit that will
> download the data to them via a built-in acoustic coupler (so I'm
> assuming it's a low speed link ala Bell-103).

Hey!  That's a really neat idea!  It beats the hell out of the electrode
stuff they've been doing for so long.

>  From what I've been reading about the pacemaker, the monitoring company
> can actually reprogram the pacemaker thru this link as well (by a
> realtime link with my doc) if it's needed.

FEAR.  I'd ask them to NOT do that.  People being able to reach through
the telco and fsck with the ticker is BAD.

> And the really big question is: How many geek points do I get for
> having a computer regulated heart? :)

That depends.  Does it run Unix? :)

The acoustic-coupler wins major geek points from me, though.  Non-copper
ways of moving data around are a major source of fascination with me.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke  ) "Earth works.  That's proof positive that Mother
Elgin, TX         (   Nature isn't a suit."            --Dave McGuire