My Life at 9200 rpm's: The future at 60 minutes per hour

Doing Navy duty in London some years ago, I grabbed a colleague by the collar as he stepped off the curb of a busy street without looking to the right.  As a "colonist" from across the pond, we don't drive on the left.  For us it is the wrong side of the road 

My friend, I'm sure was imbued with the warning to look both ways, but in London the memory failed him. He looked left and began to plunge into oncoming traffic from the right. He narrowly avoided having a double decker bus ruin his evening.  

The point is that neither of us knew or could count on surviving the rest of our assignment in a foreign land.  All we had were dinner plans at a rushed pace before returning to our North Audley Street hq, across from the U.S. Embassy at Grosvenor Square.

We were working port and starboard watches, 12 hours on, 12 hours off.  The change came on the 7's:  0700 and 1900 daily for three days and then we would switch to the other's schedule.  This went on for nearly a month. But all of that could have changed in a flash, a matter of seconds. 

There's always something to learn about "driving" an LVAD so to say. Be prepared for the unexpected.  That doesn't mean that I'll have the answer, but being alert helps.

Clearly, depending on an LVAD to survive, sharpens the focus on the minutes in an hour.  It hasn't become a distraction or an obsession by any means.  

But planning has to be practical and realistic.  When, leaving my house, I carry a pack with spare batteries and a spare system controller. Yesterday, the small battery in my LVAD system controller began to sound an alarm, one quick beep, twice in an hour. What's up with that?

This had not happened before.  The beep was so quick that it was difficult to capture visually.  The second time, I caught a glimpse of the yellow light as it was going dim. 

I called the U of Minnesota to talk to an LVAD coordinator, and, after a brief conversation, we got to the bottom of the issue. The problem was solved by changing the battery module.  I had two spares on hand and, in a pinch, I could take the one in my spare system controller.

But when the initial signal sounded and showed, I had no fixed idea about the outcome.  Did I have 60 minutes, 60 hours, 60 days?

Accepting that I and my equipment are a working experiment, you have to be prepared for the unexpected.  This is not an exact science.  There is some art involved. As the saying goes, you can plan the plan, but not the outcome.  

Semper Paratus (always ready).