tempaway43355

Yeah that drag and drop save was funny. It was the era of 'lets do this using drag and drop just because it looks cool and metaphorical - you are literally PUTTING that file IN that folder - geddit?'

Just for comparison the Acorn Archimedes launched in 1987 with Arthur OS (later to become Risc OS) with a full windowed desktop with overlapping windows etc. They were able to pull this off because they had designed a new processor that they called the "Acorn RISC Machine"*

Screenshot of 1987 desktop here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_RISC_OS#/media/File...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_RISC_OS

* ARM for short, you might have heard of it

Interesting idea. Current battery in the device (I looked it up) is:

Chemistry: Lithium carbon monofluoride

Voltage: 3.3 V, open circuit

Rated capacity: 1 Amp-hour

Self-discharge rate: <1% per year

Its a tiny non-rechargeable battery presumably carefully picked for safety and very slow usage over several years.

I suppose the main barrier to wireless charging of implant batteries would be heat - wireless charging generates heat. And when something goes wrong with wireless charging it can generate a lot of heat. So I guess its risky? But then surgery to change a battery is also a significant risk.

Also I guess someone would have to go through the long process with the FDA of getting it all approved, whereas (at a guess) people designing implants try and use already-proven components and techniques where they can to make approval more likely.

Thats a good question not a silly one. They don't have the communication skills to tell me but they dont seem to be aware of it. Apparently some people experience it as a tingling sensation in throat or neck.

Your question makes no sense in the context of epilepsy. I genuinely have no idea what you are talking about

My child has Dravet syndrome so its quite major seizure activity and many different seizure types (tc, absence, focal, myoclonic). I think slightly more left lobe than right but its been a while since we had a full EEG. VNS is known to help with Dravet in enough cases that they were prepared to try the VNS.

The VNS can help stop seizures but also there's a sortof long-term effect from just having it firing every few minutes all the time, seems to re-train the brain in some way. I'm not sure if they really know how it works, just that it seems to help.

Another non-medication treatment that was very good for us was the ketogenic diet. Like, hardcore proper ketogenic diet, 4:1 ratio, prescribed and monitored by an NHS dietician. Every meal measured out by the gram. Its hard work but it did work very well. Its been properly researched - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16146451/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25524846/ - for Dravet syndrome at least, keto is as effective as the best AEDs with fewer side effects.

Operation was in-and-out of hospital in one day. Then had a big cellophane-like bandage on neck and shoulder area that had to be kept clean and air-tight for 2 weeks. It was a good bandage though, just had to patch it up occasionally with new layers of cellophane-stuff. Main possible complication would be infection (worse case is that device then has to be removed) or some people have side effect where it feels like their throat is ticked and they cough when device activates. We didn't have any problems.

Then once its all healed they turn the device using nfc wand thing and then slowly increase the power bit by bit over several months. There are various timing and frequency settings that can be experimented with.

One of my children has severe epilepsy and has a Vagus Nerve Stimulation device implanted - Sentiva 1000

https://www.livanova.com/epilepsy-vnstherapy/en-gb/hcp/produ...

It has really helped although obviously it took surgery and then also nine months of slowly tweaking the settings.

Before the VNS they could (for example) not go on a trampoline for more than a few minutes without having a seizure, but now they're fine all day. They did still have seizures at night after the VNS but we tackled those with a different treatment.

The Sentiva 1000 sends regular soft pulses (for one minute every 3.5 minutes) and can also react to heart rate rising suddenly (which might mean a seizure) by automatically increasing its pulses. During a seizure if we want to manually activate the device we swipe over its location with a strong magnet and that activates it to send stronger pulses for a minute or so.

Batteries last about eight years. A few times a year we go to check the battery, the nurses have an ipad and a wand-type thing that they hold over the implants location, it uses some sort of low power NFC to read data and diagnostics from the implant. When we do need to change the battery that will be an operation. But less complicated than the initial operation (and even that was in-and-out in one day)

All pretty amazing.