[X] My Assistant

[djellison]

I managed to cleanly knock out one of my front teeth when I was about 10. Amazingly, they were able to put it back in and hold it there with a little bit of steelwork for a few weeks while the gum decided to 'take it back' as it were - and thus I was a temporary member of the soup's and ice cream society for a while. I was at boarding school at the time and my class mates were VERY jealous, until I reminded them that 1) picking an argument with a floor isnt very comfortable and 2) having more metalwork in your mouth than the golden gate bridge can get a 'little' uncomfortable.

Hope it all clears up toD - if not, I think there's a section in a project I was working on at work about knees

Doug

[mhoward]

Good luck, other Doug.

[dvandorn]

Thanks, everyone! It's gotten a little rough, now that the anaesthesia has completely worn off... but I'm in better shape than I would have expected.

You know, bringing this back to a space topic in some form or another, this is only the third time in my adult life I've ever been under general anaesthesia. The last time was a bad attack of appendicitis I had four years ago, which brought to mind, at the time, a serious question about long-duration manned flights to places far, far away...

You see, one thing my doctor told me, that I discovered a fair amount of supporting evidence for on the 'net, was that there seems to be a correlation between people who get their tonsils removed as children and those who have to have their appendices removed as adults. See, I was a little surprised that I would have held on to my appendix until age 46, only to get a severe case of appendicitis that would require an emergency appendectomy. When I brought it up with my surgeon in a post-operative checkup, he told me about this correlation -- and, indeed, I had my tonsils and adenoids removed when I was about 8 years old.

And that got me thinking -- on interplanetary manned flights, is there some value in the prophylactic removal of the appendices of all crew who still had theirs? Or would you just suggest this for those who still had their appendices, but not their tonsils?

I know that I was pretty well incapacitated in the wake of that emergency appendectomy, for a good three weeks. and wasn't back to normal for another two or three weeks beyond that. Even if you were able to outfit a complete surgery within, say, a Mars-bound spacecraft (which would be rather tricky in zero-G), you'd have an incapacitated crewperson on your hands for a while -- which could be a serious inconvenience, or even a dagerous situation, depending on the timing of the event.

So -- would it make sense to simply remove everyone's appendix before they take off on a three-year expedition to Mars? Or to an asteroid? Anywhere where you're months away from home at best?

-the other Doug

p.s. -- the appendectomy has a rather funny story to it. They had given me a shot of morphine when they figured out just what I was suffering from, so I was high as a kite, to put it mildly. They had taken a CAT scan of my abdomen to confirm the extent of the appendicitis (quite severe, just on the verge of bursting), and told me literally as I was wheeled out of the CAT scan room the extent of the problem and the urgency of getting me into an operating room as soon as possible. The surgeon then added, "By the way, I have to tell you, you have the largest appendix I have ever seen in my life. Granted, it's distended, but it it still larger than anyone else's I have ever seen."

So, they wheel me into the pre-op staging room (little more than an oversized closet), where my now-ex-wife stood there next to my bed, waiting for them to take me into the OR. In my morphine haze, I told her what the surgeon had told me, and then I added, "You know, I always wanted to have a really huge organ -- I just have to be more specific in what I wish for!" At which point, I heard a loud noise, turned my head, and saw a nurse at the foot of my bed, bent halfway over, laughing hysterically.

What can I say? Once a comedian, always a comedian... -toD

[Bob Shaw]

And that got me thinking -- on interplanetary manned flights, is there some value in the prophylactic removal of the appendices of all crew who still had theirs? Or would you just suggest this for those who still had their appendices, but not their tonsils?

oDoug:

On interplanetary crewed flights there'd be a real argument in favour of total tooth removal, appendix removal, and the excision of various external dangly bits of the human form - particularly in a crew which accepts that child-bearing will not be any sort of future option. It sounds callous, but given the choice of zero-g surgery or of surgery within the confines of a small lander...

...so you're halfway towards being on the crew roster!

SNIP!

Bob Shaw

[lyford]

It sounds callous, but given the choice of zero-g surgery or of surgery within the confines of a small lander...

Well, with the advances of telerobotic surgery procedures, we can now perform intricate operations from afar...
So you could remove an appendix, or a tooth... or * ahem * .... other troublesome organs....

But why stop there? If we are planning to do surgery across interplanetary space, why not perform a complete astronautedectomy?

If we are devising amazing robotic technologies to assist humans to live in extremely hostile environments, why not just send the amazing robots instead? Why are we spending so much of our valuable space science budgets on efforts to basically keep meat fresh for the voyage to Mars and beyond?

[dvandorn]

Aw, c'mon -- don't hijack my thread into a "there's no place for manned spaceflight" argument. I'm trying to keep my blood pressure down, here...



-the other Doug

[lyford]

Sorry -
But you did bring it up... I was perfectly happy to keep off-topic!

PS - hope everything is going well

[tty]

Yikes! Hillbilly Heroin?!?!?! Just don't put on any Jefferson Airplane while convalescing....
I hope you are able to resume your break dancing career with only a minor interruption.

Almost anything seems to be usable as a narcotic once a junkie gets hold of it. On the other hand almost nothing is a narcotic unless a junkie gets hold of it.
Believe it or not, Heroin was used on a large scale for medical purposes in Sweden and Denmark in the 40's and 50's. It was used as cough drops (it is an excellent cough remedy). Nobody seems to have noticed any particular problems with it.

tty

[RNeuhaus]

Recently there were many remote surgical operations. The patient in the other side with robots arms and camera and the doctors in the other sides with a big panel with powerfull zoom and a pair arms with access to all surgical instruments with the help of technicians which are in the surgical room.

I think that this would be the probably extra-planet medical attention to the astronauts.

By the way, I hope you will start to progress in everyday and will start to feel even confident that you are going to be able to walk good again.

Rodolfo

[CosmicRocker]

Hey O'Doug. Sorry to belatedly learn of your misfortune, but quite happy to learn of your imminent recovery. I liked the Doug^2 moniker someone tagged you with some time ago, but that's OT.

I'll try to refrain from sad stories of my own. Suffice it to say (as many have said before me) that, getting old sucks. Now that you have set yourself up with a pretty much bulletproof alibi, I haven't noticed you taking advantage of it around here. What are you waiting for? Have some fun.

Get well, soon.

[edstrick]

Bumper Sticker: GETTING OLD AIN'T FOR SISSIES.

Rueful observation: "You know you're old when you no longer have a family doctor, you have a "medical staff"."

[tty]

Recently there were many remote surgical operations. The patient in the other side with robots arms and camera and the doctors in the other sides with a big panel with powerfull zoom and a pair arms with access to all surgical instruments with the help of technicians which are in the surgical room.

I think that this would be the probably extra-planet medical attention to the astronauts.

Might get a little bit slow a couple of light minutes away.....

tty

[dvandorn]

There is also the whole question of performing surgery in a microgravity environment. How difficult would that be? Would microgravity make the clearing of incisions and wounds of blood and tissue significantly harder?

Would we have to develop some kind of centrifuge just to offer a G-field within which to perform sensitive medical/surgical procedures?

Seems to me that this is an area in which we could be using the ISS for really valuable research. Although, using the ISS to develop microgravity surgical techniques would have its own issues to deal with, not the least of which would be the transportation of live animals to ISS to be used as experimental guinea pigs. Live animal research is a touchy subject here in the U.S., performing it on the ISS would just raise the profile of the issue much higher than it is right now.

But, see, this is where I see ISS as a useful platform for certain types of research. It provides a habitable microgravity environment in which we can develop and test procedures that will eventually be needed by interplanetary explorers. Why not start developing that data and those capabilities *now*, and use the ISS for something approaching a useful purpose???

You could also design and test a centrifugal artificial-gravity module within ISS operations, and I don't see anyone even mentioning the concept. Seems to me it would be cheaper and easier to check out how well such things work at the ISS than it would be to just design one and fly it, untested, as part of the first major manned interplanetary expedition.

-the other Doug

[tty]

You could also design and test a centrifugal artificial-gravity module within ISS operations, and I don't see anyone even mentioning the concept. Seems to me it would be cheaper and easier to check out how well such things work at the ISS than it would be to just design one and fly it, untested, as part of the first major manned interplanetary expedition.

Not to mention that we have no idea how much gravity is really needed to eliminate the medical problems of microgravity. This is impossible to test on Earth but could be tested on animals in quite a small artificial-gravity module.

tty

[jamescanvin]

You could also design and test a centrifugal artificial-gravity module within ISS operations, and I don't see anyone even mentioning the concept. Seems to me it would be cheaper and easier to check out how well such things work at the ISS than it would be to just design one and fly it, untested, as part of the first major manned interplanetary expedition.

Not to mention that we have no idea how much gravity is really needed to eliminate the medical problems of microgravity. This is impossible to test on Earth but could be tested on animals in quite a small artificial-gravity module.

Yeah, it's a real shame the CAM isn't going to fly. There could have been some really interesting experements done with that (for once)

James