"pyotr filipivich" wrote in message
...
I skipped the meeting, but the Memos showed that "Michael Koblic"
wrote on Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:47:56 -0800 in
rec.crafts.metalworking :
pyotr filipivich wrote:

I can hear mine plainly although I wear hearing aids. Others have
stopped and shushed me and asked, "What is that noise?" I usually
have some fun with them before I tell them. Soon after surgery, I
was up hiking in the mountains. I had a light pack on, and could
hear a drip, drip, drip. I checked my water bottles, thinking it
was one of them leaking. The second time I heard it, I stopped and
listened and realized what it was. It's plain as day, but gets
covered up most of the time by normal sound levels. But when it is
quiet, you can hear it.


I get bugged by the hum of florescent bulbs. A click in the chest
... I dunno. Might drive me over the edge.
OTOH, it would provide a built in metronome.

There are benefits. If you go into atrial fibrillation (heart "irregularly
irregular") you can tell your doctor sooner rather than later. Or if you
start having dizzy spells, you can tell your doctor how you do not hear
the
clicking for 10 seconds before you pass out. Etc. etc. Also your
significant
other can pick up on irregularities very quickly.

Anyway, the new valves do not make as much noise as the old ones used to
make. The Starr-Edwards (ball-in-a-cage) was wonderfull as the ball tended
to rattle in the cage.

People are adaptable. I knew a guy who lost his arm, so had hook.
Saved having to look for tongs when organized the charcoal for the
grill.
The other side of it is that saying "I wouldn't want to live like
that" just means,"given my druthers, I wouldn't ask to live like
that." If its a choice of dying or having a valve clicking away twenty
four hours a day - better a noisy ticker than a stopped one.

tschus
pyotr

--
pyotr filipivich
We will drink no whiskey before its nine.
It's eight fifty eight. Close enough!

My sis lived for a few years with a defibrillator, and then was the first
woman in the United States to have a left ventricular assist. That's a pump
implanted in the heart, with an external power source and computer, which
has to be worn 24/7 by the patient. It is the last stop before you get a
transplant or the bus goes over the cliff, whichever happens first. She was
on a waiting list, and they found a match and a donor one week before she
dropped off the list because of age. Had the transplant, a couple of months
of complications, but it will be two years now in June post transplant.
That had to be a couple of tough years.

Steve