Giving Thanks for Technology

I recently had a less than desirable chance to see what technology can do. I spent a sleepless night with my wife November the 24th. She was experiencing some pretty rough stomach pain. We may have not done anything about it, except she is over 5 months pregnant. So the next morning we stopped by the hospital to make sure nothing critical was wrong. As it turned out, something was very wrong and Pepto-Bismol wasn't going to help. The first thing I noticed was that while an ultrasonic sensor was used to verify the health of the baby, the doctor had to check her pain in a very different way. He would poke my wife in the side and say, "Does that hurt?" This presented an incredible contrast for me as I observed the place of technology in medicine. It would seem that our inventions can work miracles, but what really matters is the answer to the question "How do you feel?"

Though the room was well lit, the doctors did their best to keep us in the dark about what they were thinking. I wandered around the room trying to take my mind off of the situation and examined all the amazing pieces of equipment (medical instruments have always fascinated me, my first patent was a pulse measurement device). I found I could explain some of the inner workings of the hospital machines to the attending nurses as they knew how to use it, but not how it actually worked.

The doctor finally came back and gave his diagnosis. My wife had appendicitis. I learned that appendicitis is a 'clinical' diagnosis. 'Clinical', indicates there is no test that can run to know for sure if you have it. What that means is they are basically cutting you open on a really good hunch. I wasn't sure this was the thing to do to a pregnant woman, and I said as much to the doctor. He indicated that pregnancy would increase the risk of complication during the operation but if the appendix were to burst, death was a likely possibility. Now, the appendix usually explodes within 48 hours of the onset of pain, and it had already been 24. So my answer, same as my wife's was, "Take it out."

The anesthesiologist came in and discussed the procedure with us. I learned of some more miraculous equipment now available to hospitals. In the operating room, they hook up every vital sign you knew you had and quite a few you didn't know existed to a powerful computer. The system can monitor all the inputs at once and track trends in the data, and warns the doctor well in advance of the onset of various problems. This type of instrument makes operating safer than ever before. Amazing.

She came through the operation ok, but it was not over yet. The greatest concern we now faced was the onset of premature labor causing the loss of our third son. To keep track of this, they have all sorts of neat devices that can monitor contractions, automatically feed nutrients to the mother and many other things. They even plug it all into a network so there is no need to come in and wake the mother in the middle of the night. It can all be monitored from the nurse's station. I spent another fretful night as the contractions that began during the operation finally subsided.

My wife is well on her way to a full recovery now. And I would be an unfeeling, uncaring soul if I did not express how thankful I am to have her still with me. Don't get me wrong, I'm not thankful for the god of technology. I thank the God who gave us technology. I am grateful that my family lives in a world where miracles unheard of a scant 50 years ago can be so easily preformed as to make them seem commonplace. I can't imagine what amazing things my children will see, but I am glad they will get that chance.

I didn't get a chance to stuff myself with turkey this year but I am grateful that I had a chance to truly understand the meaning of Thanksgiving.

Product Engineering Archive

		Click here to get your listing up.