Well, I did it again: led the Seven-Sentence Short Story workshop (created by science fiction and fantasy author James van Pelt) at a writing conference, this time, Wordbridge in Lethbridge, Alberta. Here’s the story I …
It’s time for this year’s Kickstarter to fund Shapers of Worlds Volume V, the fifth in the series of anthologies featuring science fiction and fantasy by authors who were guests on my Aurora Award-winning podcast, The …
It takes money to publish books, and most of that money flows out the door before the book is released and sales begin, so my publishing company, Shadowpaw Press, is turning to Crowdfundr to help …
Shapers of Worlds Volume IV, the fourth anthology featuring authors who were guests on my podcast, The Worldshapers, is now available everywhere, including directly from Shadowpaw Press. Here’s a handy universal URL with links to …
My publishing company, Shadowpaw Press, has three great titles coming out in the first two months of 2024, all of them science fiction or fantasy. The first two, The Good Soldier by Nir Yaniv and …
Here’s another seven-sentence short story! I ran the workshop again at Ganbatte, an anime convention in Saskatoon. It went well, and here’s the one I created, again with the instructions, created by noted SF short-story …
Previous
Next
"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/
5 comments
Skip to comment form
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”…