Category Archives: Health

Health stuff

I hate being ill..

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I’ve been really lucky with my health, so having come down with what I reckon to be food poisoning in the early hours of Sunday morning was not fun. I’m over the worst of it now though and I reckon I’ll be able to eat something for the first time in 36 hours – then it’s into the massage chair and have a nice bath.

Leon Brooks Update

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Another update from the PLUG list:

Leon was taken off the sedation on Saturday and has been waking up slowly since then. As you can imagine, this is a slow process because of the nature of the injuries and the level of morphine he is on. He was put in a chair/bed for a while today so he could be in a different position. He required support, but opened one eye slightly and was able to look at Lucy and move his head to see. He was responding to pain stimulus on his hands and feet yesterday, but today he has improved to respond to a more gentle touch on his feet, and squeezed people’s hands with his when requested (after a few seconds pause). He still has a tube down his throat, but the assisted breathing has been turned off – he is now breathing on his own!

Leon Brooks Update

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Update from PLUG:

Author: Alex Polglaze
Date: 2006-02-28 13:09 +1100
Subject: [plug] LEON BROOKS UPDATE

This is an update of Leon Brooks’s current situation.

Leon is in Royal Perth Hospital in a medically induced coma. He currently has a chest infection and the doctors are fighting that. They expect that it will be another 4-5 days before they can reduce the sedation sufficiently and assess the brain and spinal damage.

He is expected to be in Intensive Care for another 4-5 weeks and therefore cannot receive any flowers during this time. Also Lucy is not at home much, so please hold the flowers.

Currently, babysitting, transport and meal preparation and supply are under control.

[…]

Lucy thanks everybody for the well wishes and support and is mentioning everybody as she talks to Leon.

So keep thinking of him and hopefully he will recover.

Alex Polglaze

Here is a probably related ABC news item from Sunday.

Hang in there Leon…

Leon Brooks in Intensive Care After Car Crash

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Bad news reported in a message to the PLUG list:


Date: 2006-02-27 13:54 +1100
To: plug
Subject: [plug] leon brooks

It is my sad duty to inform you all that Leon Brooks had a car accident on Saturday night and has severe head injuries and is currently in ICU.

Further details are sketchy at this stage.

🙁

Leon, I hope you make a speedy and thorough recovery. Get well soon.

Via Linux Australia

Computer Aided Heart Surgery

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This is pretty amazing, an imaging system linked to robotic surgical instruments have been developed that compensates for the beating of the heart possibly allowing surgeons to operate without having to stop or slow it during an operation.

Whilst they’ve only tested it on an artificial silicone heart the fact that this could end the trauma of open heart surgery and removing the need to break open the patients chest sounds wonderful. I’d speculate that this would reduce the risk to people from such surgery significantly…