Richard, I've seen the prototype of the rechargable, and it's not bad. It will be a take home charger, like for a cell phone, will be a shoulder strap kind of contraption, so you can slip it on for 10 minutes a day while you're watching the news, or 30 minutes a week, or however you want. Like any lithium battery it will eventually have to be replaced, but they anticipate 8-10 years instead of 3-5. Someday....I'm with you on this, we will all have implantable microchips with our entire medical history programmed in them. What a century we're living in!!! Roberta
Subject
to Recharge or not to...
Date
14 January 2004
Posted by
Richard Morelli
On another topic someone expressed the beliefd that recharging once every 3-mos. was about the same as surgery to replace the battery every 2-3 years. Having just gone through a replacement of all of one side (which I know is more than a battery) being opened up is no picnic. For one I have to drive 3 hours to get to Phila. if I want the original team to do the work -- I do. This is scheduling the OR, and perhaps bringing me in one week in advance for pre-op testing, faxing my regular MD 's for clearance to operate, facing the ever-present risk of infection. If they give each patient an Access Review, we can turn the unit on and off without the crazy magnets-- and induced charging should be no big problem. After all, my Sonicare toothbrush is made that way. I will embrace it as one of several badly-neededd improvements. Now, if it also had a transponder that would allow me to check into any medical facility and have my med history read to save the paperwork, I'd be super interested. If I"m going bionic, why not all the way?
