To Be or Bot To Be?
For many people, as they get older, their heart can’t keep pace with what it used to do. There are many causes. For some, it might be a faulty heart valve that needs replacing or repairing, or the heart is not working properly and requires a transplant. For others like me, poor eating habits and not paying attention to my diet well enough caused my cholesterol and triglyceride numbers to increase, resulting in calcification/blockage of the arteries leading to my heart. In most cases, the solution to these problems involves open heart surgery. This is where doctors have to open your chest up, move your ribs out of the way, and work directly with your heart to make the repairs.
The success rate of these operations, through modern medical advances, is very high compared to the same procedures (if they even existed) when I was born.
In the case of a bypass operation, which I am having, I like the idea that doctors can take something useful from another part of my body (a vein in my leg, perhaps) and use it to work around the weak pathway to my heart to repair the issue which should prevent possible heart attacks in the future.
The recovery time can be lengthy. These are not outpatient procedures.
When I signed up to be older, this was not what I planned to have happen, but due to circumstances that I didn’t control, it did.
I hoped to wait a little longer until the technology to resolve these heart problems was less…intrusive.
I think that in the future when such heart dilemmas occur, the solution to these types of health issues will involve nanobots.
Specialized microscopic heart bots trained to seek out and repair. Once injected into your bloodstream, they find their way to the obstructions and faulty parts of your heart. Then, clean out the blockages in your arteries (like Roto-Rooter does for clogged pipes) and repair/regenerate the sections of the artery or heart that need improvement. Once completed, the doctors would extract the bots or the bots would dissolve naturally, as some stitches do nowadays. (No one wants rogue bots traveling throughout one’s body looking for things to do when they get bored having done their job.)
But alas, we are not there yet. Waiting until someone creates these bots is not an option for me. My doctors tell me I have a strong heart despite my numerous obstructions. Hopefully, that will improve my odds, so should the need arise again, I can take advantage of that newer, modern technology.
At least, that’s my plan.
See you all next time. :{)
