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| Simple and, as a result, lovable |
Technology isn’t to everyone’s taste. One ignored example is the automotive gearbox. Many think it simply makes the vehicle go faster and leave it at that. Tell them it takes advantage of varying levels of an engine’s efficiency and their eyes will glaze over. Explain it does this by linking cogs with different numbers of teeth and they’ll sigh. Attempt a mathematical reduction of these ratios and they’ll open a bottle of vodka. One-litre capacity. And you’ll be banned from further discourse. (Note to Avus: this post isn’t about your mnemonic digressions)
On the other hand, show them a plastic jar-top loosener that cost 50 p and works with a satisfying pop; they’re entranced. The difference is complexity vs. simplicity. The 27 km long CERN tunnel in Switzerland is so complex most of us are ignorant of its ultimate aims. But that loosener is so neat, so gadgety, so understandable.
My portable baby’s bottle (See Avert your eyes from risqué joke) delivers chemo continuously to my system while I’m away from the hospital. It’s described, somewhat ponderously, as an “Elastomeric pump for ambulatory infusion”. But don’t pumps require some form of energy to work? No sign of an electric motor or a steam engine in my crotch invader. Just a small balloon of fluid afloat in some other kind of fluid.
Yet there’s energy stored there, even if it’s invisible. The external fluid (I think; it could be the other) is under pressure. Open the tap to the thin tube leading deep into my chest cavity and the chemo in the balloon is squeezed out. After 48 hr it’s all in me and the balloon’s empty. Ingenious? Certainly. Cheap too. Since the bottle is probably disposable.
Honest, it’s nice to know how things work.
For half of my life, I couldn't waste a moment on modern medicine and when asked would express my disdain about vague notions of in-the-pockets-of-the-pharma-industry and have a little huff about people who followed doctor's orders. Little did I know . . . Now I am a fan, in a big way. Imagine the research that's gone into that clever pump, the test trials, the reviews, the efforts to reproduce results etc. before it was let loose on the population.
ReplyDeleteSabine: A good deal of my later journalistic career centred on technology - the application of science as opposed to the science itself. All sorts: powered travel, culinary work, the wider implications of metallurgy, DIY, logistics - all eventually fusing with IT. When I decided to open a blog in 2008 I attempted to base it on technology, hence the name, Works Well. The response was poor, perhaps the subject was too limited. Perversely I switched to an even more limited subject - the verbal articulation of music. Even more perversely I changed the blog name to Tone Deaf. Not surprising, the response was even poorer.
DeleteIn any case my interests had changed over those first years. I had started writing properly planned novels and I also used the blog as a launch-pad for shortish short stories. Tone Deaf took on a wider view and I found I was part of a circle of kindred spirits - to hell with bloggish ideology.
But I never lost my interest in things that did things. Admirably touched on in the final sentence of your comment. What really fascinated me were simple solutions to difficult problems. The baby's bottle for chemo was a perfect example. Seems we share that theme.
And thus unto me it is revealed. I watched a full minute of an elastomeric infusion pump troubleshooting guide. First tip: if the bottle is leaking, and any of the fluid that is supposed to be pumped directly into your heart touches your hands, wash your hands with soap and water for a full five minutes.
ReplyDeleteMikeM: After each fortnightly session of chemo I'm required to take two separate courses of different anti-sickness pills. One strong, one less strong. The instructions are distinctly minatory: the chemo fluids are said to be cytotoxic. I haven't looked up the definition of that word, preferring to guess at it. Chemo is serious business but then so is the reason for undergoing it. When I can't sleep I see myself as a modern-day Duke of Wellington, but during the opening minutes of Waterloo, not afterwards when Napoleon's ass had been severely kicked. I am, as it were, a battlefield. Perhaps there's an opera in it.
DeleteA fascinating discussion of that "simple" little machine that is delivering, automatically, cytotoxic fluids that are also life prolonging - a delicate balance.
ReplyDeleteI am with you on Sabine's final sentence, the research that went into that device must have been extensive.
Avus: While in a room quite close to chemotherapy there is an MRI scanner that cost... what? Zillions. Equally ingenious but not what you'd call simple. Funny thing about scanners, compared with pre-WW2 days they de-skill doctors but increase their diagnostic abilities a thousandfold. As no doubts medics in Ukraine are presently discovering.
ReplyDelete