18 April, 2006

Bionic Uterus

and vagina, and cervix and everything else.....I've been patiently waiting for Rachel to pick this up, but she hasn't yet. So I'm going to talk about it.

When I was getting my Junior Lifesaving Certification, I became intimately familiar with Resusci Annie. Okay, not that intimate, but I did save her from drowning several times, in the parallell universe where she was real and I was a lifeguard in a lake, not the shallow end of the community pool. It was fantastic, because not only did I learn true CPR technique, I was able to do so without kissing Scott, the skeevy guy in my JLC class.

It appears that medical science has taken the concept of robotic patientry to a whole new level. The $20,000 robotic birth dummy does everything a pregnant woman can do--except threaten to cut off her husband's Charlie Browns.

She can be programmed for a variety of complications and for cervix dilation. She can labor for hours and produce a breach baby or unexpectedly give birth in a matter of minutes. She ultimately delivers a plastic doll that can change colors, from a healthy pink glow to the deadly blue of oxygen deficiency. The baby mannequin is wired to flash vital signs when hooked up to monitors. The computerized mannequins emit realistic pulse rates and can urinate and breathe.


Nature mocks me. I've been saying for years that everyone I know is getting pregnant except me. Girls I used to babysit for are getting pregnant. But now even the creepy self-peeing Baby Tender Love dolls of my childhood have grown up and are giving birth.

The good thing is that all the little Merediths and Izzies and Georges and Cristinas can now have actual Kobyashi Maru delivery practice without costing a human life. I think it's worth the twenty grand.

14 Comments:

At 3:43 PM, April 18, 2006, Blogger dolphin said...

Off-topic (sorry)

I was just wondering if you got my email since I haven't heard back from you?

 
At 3:48 PM, April 18, 2006, Blogger Kat Coble said...

I didn't. It's probably accidentally in my junk box. Did you send it to mycropht@excite.com? That'd be the address I check once in a blue moon.

I'll go see if it's there....

 
At 4:42 PM, April 18, 2006, Blogger Lee said...

Kat, off topic, part II.

Don't know how if it's just my screen, but your new background color with the white linkage type makes it near impossible to read the type on the hyperlinks.

 
At 5:07 PM, April 18, 2006, Blogger Kat Coble said...

I was in the middle of fixing my template when the computer crashed. Blogger had only saved half the changes.

It should all be okay now.

----

Oh, and, Dolphin, I did fix TUIB. Now I just have to save it from death....

 
At 6:38 PM, April 18, 2006, Blogger Rachel said...

Kat,
Thank you for waiting patiently. :) Unfortunately, I was buried for the last few days with the last of the work for my last semester of graduate school. Now I'm done - woo-hoo!
I did see this thing - I wonder how they program a plastic doll to protest that, no, her labor is proceeding just fine, and neither a c-section, episiotomy, or lying flat on her back is necessary. ;)

 
At 8:48 AM, April 19, 2006, Blogger Lesley said...

If only they could figure out how to make that robot give birth to the human baby of my choice (ie, my egg, George Clooney's sperm). THAT would be news.

 
At 9:11 AM, April 19, 2006, Blogger dolphin said...

Yeah, hopefully I'll get aroudn to trying to post there a bit more often again. Things just get busy, ya know?

 
At 9:00 PM, April 19, 2006, Blogger Lydia said...

What a concept - not experimenting on humans! I know that all doctors have to learn and that medical residents are necessary, but I don't want them learning on me. I have told Patrick not to let any resident work on me. I have already been experimented on too much in my relatively short life.

 
At 9:02 PM, April 19, 2006, Blogger Lydia said...

And another thing - why should I give my history to a prepubecent resident, when I am just going to have to rehash it all again for the grown-up doctor.

 
At 9:11 PM, April 19, 2006, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm not a big blog follower but saw the item on Rachel's blog and came over to see this. I am still giggling over the following comment:

*But now even the creepy self-peeing Baby Tender Love dolls of my childhood have grown up and are giving birth.*

 
At 9:54 PM, April 19, 2006, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am echoing lesley's comment... to a certain extent. Maybe they CAN develop a bionic uterus to enable infertile women to carry a human fetus. How Gattaca is that?

Funny since I just watched Jennifer Garner give birth on Alias. My lands, if that hoochie can have a baby, why can't everyone!

 
At 1:24 AM, December 30, 2009, Blogger sasha said...

thanks for this blog
here is a blog about women health
pregnancy and tubal reversal

http://www.mybabydoc.com/blog/
tubal reversal

 
At 2:46 AM, April 08, 2011, Anonymous Reversal of Tubal Ligation said...

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At 5:58 AM, December 10, 2013, Blogger Unknown said...


I can't wait to see your examples of how your handwriting has evolved! I am obsessed with the different forms that handwriting takes. I love collecting old postcards just to see the writing...
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