Three Clear Nights and No Data

["Tom Droege" <droege@snapmail.us>]

Sigh!  I figure I might as well give my excuses.  Some incentive I think
to make sure the data is archived properly and available to anyone that
might want it in the future.

So, why no data? Thursday night after some consultation with my doctor
Jennifer took me to the emergency room. Shortly thereafter I was admitted.
 I just escaped.

When you are in a hospital these days for any length of time the
reipiratory therapist comes along and gives you a breathing machine.  This
is a plastic device that you suck on and a piston goes up to indicate your
lung capacity.  The idea is for you to work this several times an hour to
keep your lungs from becomming congested.  Mine was marked 0 to 4000 cc.
I could do 750 at first but got to 1500 after a while.  Jennifer who is a
serious swimmer could do 2500.  It probably would take an olympic swimmer
to get to 4000.  A long term smoker might not do 500.

The device is really a slick design and is designed to prevent cheating.
It  uses a flow meter which consists of a little smiley face that you keep
in a window and a piston to measure flow (force) x time to get volume.
For a throw away device it is quite clever and has some serious
engineering features to make it accurate at very low production cost. The
measurement piston even has piston rings for accurate control of the force
it takes to rise up the cylendar.

Being an engineer and being alone with this device and with nothing to do,
I figured out how it worked and figured out how to cheat it in a very
slick way.  When a doctor or nurse would come into the room, I would give
them a line about vacuum space and how I could draw it into my lungs to
make room for more air.  I would then suck on the device and the indicator
would slowly go up to 4000 and bump along on the limit.  I actually had
one doctor grab it out of my hands.  No one figured out my trick even
though it was done in plain sight. I have had a wonderful time
entertaining the hospital floor.  When I last saw the lung doctor this
morning, he said "I *won't* ask you to work the lung machine". But he let
me out anyway.

I also named my fluid pump R2D2 since it sort of looked like R2 and I
could make it beep at me when I wanted it to.  I suspect that they will be
calling these machines R2D2 in the future at Delnor hospital. When it's
battery would run low in the middle of the night I would call the desk and
say R2D2 is beebing and wants help.  I could hear the chuckle at the other
end.

What I had (pulmanary embolisms) is serious and could have killed me.  My
doctor did the right thing at the right time and the emergency room at
Delnor did all the right things the first time.  I think it is under
control now.  Just one more thing to take medication for and to be careful
about.  Actually I may have more energy shortly since I think this has
been a problem for some time.

So while I did no electronic design, I did some mechanical foolery which
was a lot of fun and gave the floor all the trouble (and amusement)
possible.  They will remember me.

Tom Droege