The miracle of modern medicine.

“My uncle underwent 10 hr of brain surgery friday. He had 13 doctors , the anethesiologist plus nurses working on him. A tumor (benign) the size of a strawberry was removed. It was located right inside the skull bu his left ear. he lost his hearing which was inevitable.

The amazing part was that when I visited him 22hrs after coming out of surgery he had moved himself on his own out of bed to a chair, he was lucid and talking. I went back the following day in time to see him go on his 3rd walk of the day, we visited an hr and planned a racing boat and drinking trip. He will be out thursday.

Modern Medicine simple amazes me. I try to grasp it but an in total awe.”

“Sounds familiar, oh yeh, 1993 for me, except behind right eye, size of a hen's egg, 9 hours under anesthesia, lost some field of vision in right eye and the physical therapist the next day said you are fine, no therapy needed.

They told me not to expect any further problems from that condition although without the surgery would have had a fatal stroke within months.
last edited: 1/09/06 8:01:51 PM”

“Thats very cool lonesurveyor.”

“Wow, glad to hear he is doing well!”

“Did he keep his hearing in his other ear?”

“Yep no problems there. Thus far thats his only side effect.”

“I'm very happy that things went so well. What a relief!”

“Glad to hear everything went well.
Modern medicine amazes me too and it seems like we hear of new things almost daily. In November, I was operated on by a robot of all things. The doctor operates it like a video game to move the robotic tools. It can work in places too small for human hands and do the job better with less cutting. They are now developing it to do surgery over the internet, so he can operate on someone in a different city using a robot set up in a distant hospital with him at the controls hundereds of miles away. The goal is to provide skilled surgery to areas that don't have skilled surgeons to do the work. It sounds like something out of Star Trek, but it's real.”

“That's downright amazing, RichB. I like to think I keep up on the latest technical gadgets and breakthroughs - but I had not read about or considered remote surgery. Freakin awesome.”

“I never heard about it until my doctor told me he would be using it on me. I didn't know much about it at the time other than what he explained, but when I looked it up on the internet it has been developed only recently. It has been used for heart surgery mostly, but is being expanded for other surgery now. The new twist in it is the remote surgery. I'm sure they need someone on the other end that can work the machine just in case though. That person would not likely have the skills of the main surgeon so hopefully nothing would go wrong with a connection or something.
last edited: 1/09/06 10:30:14 PM”