Beam me up Scotty, I’ve seen it all
By BILL DUNCAN
The Elderstatesman
I am old enough to have thought while growing up that Buck Rogers was just a science fiction character, but I have since come to the conclusion that Phillip Francis Nowlan, who first introduced Rogers in 1928 was merely a prophet.
I thought I had seen it all when my TV screen had fuzzy videos of Astronaut Alan Shepard hitting two golf shots on the moon after the Apollo 14 landing in 1971. But like most events in this fast moving world, that is already ancient history.
I recently underwent a medical crisis that led to months of hospitalization that finally ended when cardiologists Frances Muckenbeck performed delicate heart surgery to install a new state of the art pacemaker in my chest at River Bend Medical Center in Springfield, where she now practices. She had implanted another pace maker in my chest some years before when she practiced medicine in Roseburg. I naturally turned to her when I needed this risky procedure, which was done on June 15.
Last week, I returned to River Bend Medical Center for a detailed briefing on a home monitoring system for the new implant. After the briefing I returned to Roseburg with a small box containing the device that is smaller than a table radio. My instruction was to connect the device to the phone line and power source in my bedroom. Then I was to stand in front of the device, push a power button and wait for lights to flash on three different icons, the first being a human image showing the heart. The next one was something that looked like a cell phone tower and the third resembled a grouping of stars. When the lights reached the stars icon the device was activated.
Somewhere out there where they play golf on the moon, there is a satellite that boomerangs the data it reads to my cardiologist’s office in Springfield. If something is out of order, I get a phone call.
The name on this device is Merlin@home transmitter. I fully understand the naming because Merlin in King Arthur’s time was the wizard, the sorcerer, the magician and believe me folks, this device is the epitome of all of Merlin’s magic. It is something out of Buck Rogers, Star Wars and Jules Verne all rolled into one.
Now get this. The device is set up on the nightstand next to my bed. If I’m in the room, or even asleep in my bed, this peeping Tom is recording my every breath. Yet, if my wife, walks into the room, even gets close to the box, it doesn’t know who she is. Only me.
Fortunately, there is a wall between the bedroom and the master bath or I would feel completely naked.
For some time, I have been on a home monitor from the VA Medical Center in Roseburg and each morning, I weigh myself, turn on the table top device and wait for a connection to the nursing center. Then a disembodied voice says: “Good morning, William. How can I help you?”
The machine asks me to take my blood pressure, record my weight, take my blood oxygen level and has me blow into a tube to record my lung power. It also asks me a series of questions and finally, asks me if I want it to transmit my data. It also goes out into cyberspace and boomerangs back to the Roseburg VA where a nurse name Dayna waits patiently to check on what time I get up in the morning and start recording my data.
This too is Merlinish to me, but at least when I weigh myself on the bathroom scales, Dayna is not peeking.
Even more interesting, the device implanted in my chest goes under the trade name of St. Jude. Any parochial school boy will tell you that he is the patron saint of lost causes.
Is that telling me something?
(Bill Duncan can be reached at bduncan@nrtoday.com or by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470.)