Essays+
So I made a new label, which is, as you probably noticed (or not) from the title—“Essays+.” Basically, on every weekday, I have to read an article, either from the science magazine Popular Science or the literary magazine (I think) magazine, Muse.
Today, I’m writing a small essay (after scouring through a stack of Popular Science magazines for nearly half an hour) about “No Pulse.” an article by Dan Baum in the March 2012 issue of Popular Science.
What is life? It’s the question lots of people ask themselves, search for, and consider the still anonymous answer as wisdom. Life, if you ask me, is pretty much inexplicable, with a variant of possible answers. Variant meaning, infinite. It’s just the state of being, and it’s our brain which creates the complex thoughts and jumbles that confuse us and throw us off course in finding our places in social life. It’s the familiar da-dump, da-dump of your heart, giving that familiar friendly greeting when you place your hand on your chest. After all, for a long time, ancient civilizations have considered the heart the ultimate source and origin of feeling and emotion.
As of March 2012, eleven thousand people worldwide do not feel that friendly da-dump. They feel a whir of a computer PC turning on, a low humming of a fly, or no feeling or sound at all. To them, life is the whirring and humming of their heart. What has happened? Have their hearts decided to leave their hosts? Have they decided that they search for a new sense of identity, and revealed their rebellious side to make a different sound, for a feeling of a new sense of life? The answer is nothing near, in fact, it’s more surprising—a jump in medical science, the key to saving lives. No, it’s not a heart on steroids, it’s actually not a heart at all. It is the artificial heart, the HeartMate II. Composed of Home Depot products and some pumps from commercial LVADs, doctors stitched it together by hand to create what may be the redefinition of one of the most fundamental symbols of life.
Sometimes, we have to sacrifice symbolic elements in life to promote life itself. Everything becomes a bit more science-y, and maybe a bit less nostalgic and ‘old-times’-y. This is one of those examples. Giving up a your heartbeat for a few more years of life—anyone would do in a heartbeat. The artificial heart may take away the familiar da-dump, but the fact that it can save lives wipes away any thought of opposing artificial heart implants. I doubt that there are many people in this world who wouldn’t want the heart implant if they needed it, and I definitely think that it is an idea that should be expanded upon. At the moment, it can’t exactly last forever and most heart implants only aid the heart in its ‘pumping,’ but with the exponential amelioration in data, information, and science, it might not be long before people who would have needed to undergo lots of surgery and eventually face death would be walking around with whirring hearts and uplifted spirits and hope.
My only question is the future—if the preponderance of people with possible future heart failures were to have artificial, more improved, futuristic HeartMate IIs, then what would be the sign of death? If you feel no pulse at your patient’s wrist, while he or she is smiling at you healthily, when will you know the difference between conscious and unconscious? It’s just a question to ponder over, and may be solved in the future. But besides that trivial ‘predicament,’ I find the HeartMate two a life-saving invention.