Ran a 5K Saturday beginning at the U.Va Campus. This race was in memory of a professor who came home from church feeling a bit ill. She went to the hospital a few hours later and was gone by evening. A virus attacked her system so fast nothing could be done. Our friend George told us the story as he escorted us to his lab.
I understand that the GPS system I've discussed before, the system that guides catheters into the heart is in use, and has actually been used about 20,000 times. Now he and the grad students are working on more accurate systems for treating heart arrhythmias. He has a heart and lung stimulator in his office, and is working on a system that will let a doctor know exactly when a needle has reached that thin layer of fluid between the heart muscle and the lining around the heart. His workbench and labs were neat and tidy, with tubes, rods and catheters in carefully labelled glass tubes. There was a magnet carefully placed beneath a glass bell jar, as the magnet is one of the strongest in the world.
Two years he's been working on the system for reaching the fluid around the heart. I asked how he managed to keep on working on a project that long, and he said something to the effect that you just keep thinking about all the people that will be helped.
It was a fascinating way to end the race. And when I got home there was a thank-you note e-mailed to me for taking the time to visit his lab. I hadn't even had time to write him a note thanking him, as I had had the little girls for an overnight.
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