June 25, 2012

The Valley of the Shadow of Death Panels

By Timothy Birdnow
I suffered heart failure back in September.  I had had a cough for some time but nothing more, and I figured it was a case of allergies run amok.  One morning I woke with breathing trouble and a fizzing sound in my chest, and went to the E.R., where I learned that my heart had given out.  The doctors were puzzled; I had no arterial blockage, just cardiomyopathy, an arrhythmia, and a low ejection fraction.  I was the walking dead; at any moment, my heart could have just stopped, and I would have been gone, much like Andrew Breitbart, who died of the same problem (Sudden Death Syndrome).  The doctors wanted to operate and place a pacemaker/defibrillator in my chest, but as I was so young (aged 47) and made it clear I was eager to avoid this, they opted for a wearable external device designed to do the same thing. Made by the Zoll corporation, the Lifevest is a miracle of high technology.  It transmits a real-time record of the wearer's heart rate to the...(Read Full Article)