{"id":20700,"date":"2024-04-03T00:27:27","date_gmt":"2024-04-03T06:27:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=20700"},"modified":"2024-04-01T17:28:45","modified_gmt":"2024-04-01T23:28:45","slug":"medical-miracles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/03\/medical-miracles\/","title":{"rendered":"Medical Miracles"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY JOELLEN COLLINS<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
JoEllen Collins\u2014a longtime resident of the Wood River Valley, now residing in San Francisco\u2014 is an Idaho Press Club award-winning columnist, a teacher, novelist, fabric artist, choir member and proud grandma.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Remember when science fiction concepts seemed imaginative but impossible? For my generation, with bulky phones and shared \u201cparty\u201d telephone lines, even the current proliferation of cellphones seemed outlandish. Who would ever imagine appearing with one\u2019s morning face on a device that could capture a bad-hair day? I was a young mother when man landed on the moon.\u00a0I remember feeling so lucky to be able to witness this milestone in human history.
\nAbout the time of Neil Armstrong\u2019s celebration, my mother died at the age of 59 from the last of heart attacks that could not be conquered. Just a couple of years later, my aunt was one of the early patients of innovative heart surgery which, at the time, seemed unbelievable, and I remember wishing that my mother had been able to be the recipient of this kind of medical miracle.
\nNow we think of as normal many procedures unavailable to past generations, benefiting from surgeries once considered fatal. Even Ray Bradbury would have considered as unattainable the kind of longevity that fellow \u201cseniors\u201d with heart problems now experience.
\nAs one who marvels at the inventions and progress of the current generation, I am still surprised by the almost daily news about medical innovations, the results of years of scientific research. This week\u2019s news included a feature on the successful transplantation of a pig\u2019s kidney into a human being. The operation, called Xeno, put a \u201chumanized\u201d pig kidney into a very ill patient who, so far, is accepting this novel process. Medical participants hope this might lead to the elimination of the long list of patients awaiting kidney transplants. Researchers from New York University have found a way to genetically modify the donor pig\u2019s kidney, so it is accepted by a person.\u00a0A childish thought popped into my mind at this news: \u201cWho would have thunk?\u201d
\nShortly after learning about the kidney transplant, I found a report on another amazing medical event.\u00a0A man paralyzed from his shoulders down has been a willing guinea pig (oops \u2014 another \u201cpig\u201d reference) in one of many attempts to restore movement in patients previously prepared to spend the rest of their lives relatively immobile. This man is photographed moving his legs up and down by telling his brain to do so.\u00a0Doctors have found a way to \u201czap\u201d his spinal cord so it sends a message to the brain to stimulate spinal movement.\u00a0He is currently still unable to walk, but there are hopes that much of the recent research on how the human brain works holds the key to creating improved functional movement.\u00a0Four patients are currently subjects of the process: they move their legs by \u201cthinking\u201d them to do so.\u00a0Whoever would have imagined a device that restores muscle functions by brain messages?
\nI hope that the \u201cscience fiction\u201d of A.I. will result in positive results. Will wonders never cease? I hope not.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY JOELLEN COLLINS Remember when science fiction concepts seemed imaginative but impossible? For my generation, with bulky phones and shared \u201cparty\u201d telephone lines, even the current proliferation of cellphones seemed outlandish. Who would ever imagine appearing with one\u2019s morning face on a device that could capture a bad-hair day? I was a young mother when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16827,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,22],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-20700","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-commentary","8":"category-on-lifes-terms"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20700"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20701,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20700\/revisions\/20701"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}