This is Easter weekend; last weekend, I sang in the Easter concert of First Baptist Church here in Regina as a guest soloist and chorister. The whole concert is worth listening to, but if you’d …
I put a link to this in the previous post on my Aurora-eligible work for 2025, but wanted to highlight it. This was my contribution to the Shapers of Worlds Volume V anthology, and it …
The Aurora Awards are Canada’s best-known science fiction and fantasy awards, voted on by fans every year. I’ve been fortunate enough to win twice, for Marseguro (DAW Books) (soon coming out in a new edition from Tuscany …
Put this under the category of “things I’ve meant to do for a long time”: I finally published (under my Endless Sky Books imprint) a new edition of The Haunted Horn, a modern-day middle-grade ghost …
The Shards of Excalibur audiobooks, narrated by the wonderful Elizabeth Klett, are now available again after being off the market for a short while. Best of all, while they’re once more on Audible.com and Audible.ca, you …
The official press release from the publisher says it all: Award-winning Canadian author, and host of The Worldshapers podcast, Edward Willett, is joining the Tuscany Bay Books family in 2026 with his The Helix War series. Tuscany Bay Books …
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"The only living Canadian with no pulse"
Sounds like the set-up to a joke about some ancient Senator, doesn’t it?
But it’s really a remarkable story about a 65-year-old-man whose heart has been replaced (*SEE UPDATE*) by an artificial “turbine heart” designed to last for 10 years.
As Paul Simon sang (many years ago now), “This is an age of miracles and wonders.”
UPDATE AND CORRECTION: The CBC story is a bit misleading, and I jumped to an unwarranted conclusion from reading it. His heart hasn’t been replaced: it’s still there, it just isn’t pumping his blood any more. Here’s the product page for the Heartmate II. And here’s CTV’s story, which is better than CBC’s.
Permanent link to this article: https://edwardwillett.com/2006/12/the-only-living-canadian-with-no-pulse/
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Doesn’t really diminish the “cool” factor, but it does raise some other questions, to whit: What about the risk of infection from an open hole in his body? And what’s pumping blood to his lungs for oxygenation?
It’s powered by an external battery.
And see my update to the post–his heart hasn’t been replaced (my misunderstanding of the CBC’s story), it’s still there, it just isn’t doing the pumping any more.
Yeah. no MRIs, I guess… I wonder what it uses for the power source? Is it nuclear like pacemakers or something else?
I have a feeling he’d better avoid strong magnetic fields, though…
That is so sweet! No thump-thump, just a quiet “whir”…