"A similar storm hit Bangladesh a while back; it too was tracked by satellite. But Bangladesh lacks means to warn its people; many thousands were killed. Here in the United States it would take real effort to miss a hurricane warning; even houses with no plumbing have television.
"Weather satellites are not spin-off; they are space program. But they must be listed because bad weather of any sort is much rougher on the aged and the handicapped than it is on the young and able - bodied.
"Portable kidney machine: If a person's kidneys fail, he must 'go on the machine' or die. 'The machine' is a fate so grim that the suicide rate is high. Miniaturization has made it possible to build portable kidney machines. This not only lets the patient lead a fairly normal life, travel and so forth, but also his blood is cleaned steadily as with a normal kidney; he is no longer cumulatively poisoned by his own toxins between his assigned days or nights 'on the machine.'
"This is new. A few have already made the switch but all kidney victims can expect it soon. The suicide rate has dropped markedly - life is again worth living; hope has been restored.
"Computerized - Axial Tomography, or CAT, or 'brain scan': They strap you to a table, fasten your skull firmly, duck behind a barrier, and punch a button - then an automatic x - ray machine takes endless pictures, a tiny slice at a time. A special computer synthesizes each series of slices into a picture; a couple of dozen such pictures show the brain in three - dimensional, fine detail, a layer at a time.
"Doppler Ultrasound Stethoscope: another microminiaturization spin-off. This instrument is to an ordinary stethoscope as a Rolls Royce is to a Model - T Ford."
Witness stands up, turns from side to side. "Look at me, please! I'll never be Mr. America; I'll never take part in the Olympics. I've climbed my last mountain.
"But I'm here, I'm alive, I'm functioning.
"Fourteen months ago my brain was dull - normal and getting worse, slipping toward 'human vegetable.' I slept 16 hours a day and wasn't worth a hoot the other 8 hours.
"Were it not for the skill of Dr. Norman Chater, plus certain spin-offs from the space program, today I would either be a human vegetable or, if lucky, dead of cerebral stroke.
"My father was not lucky; from a similar disorder it took him years to die - miserable years. He died before the operation that saved me had been invented, long before there was medical spin-off from space technology.
"Am I elderly? I'm 72.1 suffered from a disorder typical of old age, almost never found in the young.
"Am I handicapped? Yes, but my handicaps do not interfere with my work - or my joy in life. Over forty years ago the Navy handed me a piece of paper that pronounced me totally and permanently disabled. I never believed it. That piece of paper wore out; I did not.
"Mrs. Heinlein and I spent 1976 and - 77 on blood drives all over this nation. We crisscrossed the country so many times we lost track. It was worthwhile; we recruited several thousand new blood donors - but it was very strenuous. By the end of '77 we badly needed a rest, so we took a sea voyage. She and I were walking the beach on Moorea, Tahiti, when I turned my head to look at a mountain peak - and something happened.
"I balanced on my left leg and said, 'Darling, I'm terribly sorry but I think I've had a stroke. Something happened inside my head and now I'm seeing double and my right side feels paralyzed.'
"Mrs. Heinlein half carried me, half dragged me, back to the landing - got me back aboard.
"A shipmate friend, Dr. Armando Fortuna, diagnosed what had happened: a transient ischemic attack, not a stroke. When we reached California, this was confirmed by tests. However a TIA is frequently a prelude to a stroke.
"Remember that spin-off, computerized - axial tomography? That was done to me to rule out brain tumor. No tumor. The neurologist my physician had called in started me on medication to thin my blood as the clinical picture indicated constriction in blood flow to my brain. This treatment was to continue for six months.
But in only two months I was failing so rapidly that I was shipped to the University of California Medical School at San Francisco for further diagnosis. Remember the image enhancer and that dog at the University of Arizona? I said that dog was not hurt. They did it to me, with no anesthesia; it did not hurt.
"The catheter goes in down here" - witness points at his right groin - "and goes all the way up and into the aortal arch above the heart. There three very large arteries lead up toward the brain; the catheter was used to shoot x - ray - opaque dye into each, in succession. The procedure took over two hours ... but I was never bored because the image enhancer included closed - circuit television of the fluoroscopy with the screen right up here" - witness indicates a spot just above and to the left of his head - "above me, where the radiologist and his team, and the patient - I - could see it.
"How many people ever get a chance to watch their own hearts beat? Utterly fascinating! I could see my heart beating, see my diaphragm rise and fall, see my lungs expand and contract, see the dye go up into my brain... see the network of blood vessels in my brain suddenly spring into sharp relief. It was worth the trip!
"They spotted what was wrong; my left internal carotid was totally blocked. So the left half of my brain was starved for oxygen, as it was receiving only what leaked over from the right side or from the vertebrals where the network interconnected, principally at the Circle of Willis under the brain.
"But this is your speech center" - witness touches left side of skull above ear - " your word processor, the place where a writer does all his work. No wonder I was dopey - could not write, could not study, could not read anything difficult.
"My left internal carotid is still blocked; the stoppage is too high up for surgery. So they sent me to Dr. Chater at Franklin Hospital, who moved my left superficial temporal artery to feed the left side of my brain. This operation is pictured on pages 62 and 63 of the April 1978 Scientific American, so Twill omit grisly details; if surgery interests you, you can look them up there.
"The procedure is this: Scalp the patient from the left eyebrow, going high and curving down to a spot behind the left ear back of the mastoid. Cut away from the scalp the temporal artery. Saw a circular hole in the skull above the ear. Go inside the brain into the Sylvian fissure, find its main artery, join the two arteries, end to side. The left anterior lobe of my brain is now served by the left external carotid via this roundabout bypass. Dr. Chater did the hookup under a microscope with sutures so fine the naked eye can't see them.
"Check by Doppler ultrasound to make sure the bypass works, then close the hole in the skull with a plate that has a groove in it for the moved artery. Sew back the scalp - go to lunch. The surgeon has been operating for four hours; he's hungry. (The patient is not.)
"They placed me in a cardiac intensive - care room. When I woke, I found in my room a big screen with dancing lights all over it. Those curves meant nothing to me but were clear as print to the T.C. nurses and to my doctors - such things as EKG, blood pressure, respiration, temperature, brain waves, I don't know what all. The thing was so sensitive that my slightest movement caused one of the curves to spike.
"I mention this gadget because I was not wired to it. "Another space - technology spin-off: This is the way Dr. Berry monitored our astronauts whenever they were out in space.
"Colonel Berry had to have remote monitoring for his astronaut patients. For me it may not have been utterly necessary. But it did mean that I was not cluttered with dozens of wires like a fly caught in a web; the microminiaturized sensors were so small and unobtrusive that I never noticed them - yet the nurses had the full picture every minute, every second.
"Another advantage of telemetered remote monitoring is that more than one terminal can display the signals. My wife tells me that there was one at the nursing supervisor's station. Dr. Chater may have had a terminal in his offices - I don't know. But there can't be any difficulty in remoting a hundred yards or so when the technology was developed for remoting from Luna to Houston, almost a quarter of a million miles.