If you haven’t been in a hospital lately, keep up the good work. If you have, as I recently was, you’ll find there’s some amazing technology making our lives much more productive and safe.
My recent medical adventure was cataract removal. The only part I could easily appreciate was the nurse verifying which eye was the victim by putting a big, black ink dot over that eye so no one could miss it.
The procedure is scary fast – about 15 minutes. You are conscious and can hear the play-by-play of the surgeon and intern making critical decisions (“no, oh sh…” thankfully was not heard). An hour later, an eye which could only read the two big letters at the top of the eye chart before could read down the entire chart and even two lines into the second page. They had cut out the natural lens covered with a cataract sight and inserted a new, artificial lens correcting for both the cataracts and astigmatism which goes back to my childhood. This was all done with a lens engineered for my eye alone. And, yes, there was a charge above OHIP but really, that’s a lot of technology for less than $1000.00. The wait time for the procedure was about 2.5 months and it was done at a public hospital, not a private clinic.
Co-incidentally I began reading my U of T alumni engineering magazine (Skulematters, 2016 edition) which had considerable space devoted to bioengineering research and new products/processes which in the field.
It boggles the mind; everything from equipment that can suture an infant’s blood vessels too small for a surgeon to work on, to systems that grow human cells outside the body, to software systems that optimize the use of scarce operating rooms and surgical staff across a network of hospitals (patient sharing).
My personal experience was relatively minor, but its precise and successful outcome says our lives can improve hugely when medical science and engineering collaborate to solve complex problems. The availability of the procedure also suggested that resources are being reasonably well managed despite some of the media reports to the contrary. This all bodes well for my grandchildren who will benefit in the future from knowledge and devices yet unknown.
The fun part? I soon get to do it again for the other eye. Fortunately, the black ink dot is gone now, so we can start fresh and hear a new play-by-play. We are indeed ever so fortunate to live in Canada at this time in our history.
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