By now we all know that Fat Duck has undergone surgery to fix his broken heart.  Not surgery like a good drunk because his wife left him, but more like his heart could not keep up with him in his daily activities and so it would “halfheartedly” (get it?) give up.  As I understand it, the bottom part of his heart just would not pulse like it should and after numerous tests on all sorts of body parts the doctor determined he needed to install a “internal implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) pulse generator”.

Holy crap Fat Duck, that is a big old word for what they put inside your body.

Well, I went to work right away to find out exactly what this IICDPG is made of and how it works and this is my take on the whole deal.

First off it is made of some material that the body doesn’t reject like a sliver in your finger.  It just won’t push it out any time real soon and so I figure that is a good thing.  It is not a small little thing either, and so they put it high up on his chest just under his collar bone and they tuck it back in out of sight.  You know, so he shouldn’t see it sticking out when he is flexing his sharks.

Inside the unit are all sorts of neat things.  One of the things it does is keep checking up on the activity of the Ducks heart.  Is it beating properly?  Or is it not doing what it should be doing?  If the little sensor unit detects an issue, it ZAPS the heart with a powerful and painful pulse of electrical current.  Enough to run a small electrical appliance, like a toaster.  The Duck should feel this electrical impulse if it is working properly.  I suspect we will see him squint his eyes if it goes off.

Another thing this thing does is play music for the doctor to hear when he puts his stethoscope against one of the ducks sharks.  It constantly plays water sounds like a running stream in a high mountain brook.  When the doctor hears this he knows it is properly installed and operating correctly.

This little devise is really quite fascinating to study.  And in my research I have learned a new word…”joule”…

In the world of electricity I am quite familiar with the words “volts and amps” but in the doctor world they have had to come up with another word and this is the one they chose.  How did they choose such a word.  Again my research leads me to make many assumptions and this is my take on that:  You see a bunch of doctors were sitting in their exclusive little club in the hospital drinking adult beverages and after many beverages they decided they were having a jolly good time.  They talked about giving patients shocks using them big old paddle boards with the wires that shocked the patients heart and brought them back to life.  Well, this little devise had just been invented and they were talking about it at length.  They were laughing and cutting up when one of them said, let’s say we are giving the patient automatic shocks and we are getting our “jollys ” from that.  And so it was.  Let’s study the word “joule”, it does not take much imagination to come up with “jolly” out of “joule”, they just spell it like it is something new to confuse us.  But I have that one figured out pretty well.

Wikipedia says this about that but I have already figured it out for you, pay no nevermind about what is about to follow:

The joule ( /ˈdʒuːl/ or sometimes /ˈdʒaʊl/); symbol J) is a derived unit of energy, work, or amount of heat in the International System of Units.^[1] It is equal to the energy expended (or work done) in applying a force of one newton through a distance of one metre (1 newton metre or N·m), or in passing an electric current of one ampere through a resistance of one ohm for one second. It is named after the English physicist James Prescott Joule (1818–1889).^[2][3][4]

In terms firstly of base SI units and then in terms of other SI units:

where N is the newton, m is the metre, kg is the kilogram, s is the second, Pa is the pascal, and W is the watt.

So, back to the little devise.  This bad boy has a battery that will keep on ticking for up to 5 years!  The Duck will be just like the Eveready bunny….Eveready Duck…Boom!  Boom! Boom!  Boom!  FAT DUCK!  FAT DUCK!  FAT DUCK!!  Boom!  Boom!  Boom!

So, let’s just say the Duck is having an issue with his heart.  Of course he does not know it, but the IICDPG does and it sends out an electrical shock…It doesn’t just send one of the jollys out, it sends 20 jollys out!  ZZZZAAAAAPPPPPP!  Whoa, that will make your hair stand on end Sister Sara!  And the best of it all is that that little bad boy is capable of sending 30 jollys if it needs to.  Hell Carol could feel that one if the Duck and her were is the right position! ( I wonder if having this devise installed would now qualify the Duck to get a prescription for viagra ?)

And just so we all know some of the things that could be a problem for the Duck in the future it is not all roses and wine with this thing.  The doctors have told him the obvious, “infection” and we all know too that they don’t always follow the procedures of sterilizing the equipment properly after cutting up their donuts in the break room before surgery…there is often just not enough time for that.  Doctors are so busy you know.

Another thing that he could develop is “Twiddlers Syndrome”…that is where he thinks he can’t move his arm up and down because of the devise pressing against his collar bone…hell Duck give it a sharp upward go…that devise will move out of the way.

There are other things that could happen, but we won’t go into them because the likely hood of them happening are out of the question, right?  Something like the wire coming loose from its screwed in position in the heart or the wire breaking…come on…these wires are made by the same company that Edjukateer is working for.

And so there you have it right from the old knowledgeable Bears Butt and we all know it just doesn’t get much better than that.

Glad to see you are going to be around for many, many, many more years Duck!

Bears Butt

Nov. 20, 2012