Artificial heart implant, death of Technicolor, and the quest for validation (weekly wrap #010)
Hello,
I’ve been trying to decide whether I want to keep Under My Turban a partly paid-publication or open it up entirely and have decided to just open up the weekly wraps moving forward for free. This isn’t so much a strategic decision as it is intuitive, but my intention is to actually just make it more easily shareable and accessible to more people, which sometimes Substack makes it tricky to do and can create a bit of unwanted insulation within Substack itself.
So anyway, if it is your first time here, welcome! My weekly wrap posts/emails are a light and easy wrap up of some cool/interesting/fun things I’ve found or am thinking about over the past week.
Enjoy!
Something I read that amazed me
Australia’s first durable total artificial heart implant announced as a success
Australia’s first implant of a BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart has been announced as an unmitigated clinical success, with the patient becoming the first in the world to be discharged from hospital.
The implant took place on 22 November 2024 at St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney in a six-hour procedure led by renowned St Vincent’s cardiothoracic and transplant surgeon, Dr Paul Jansz.
After a few weeks in the ICU, followed by observation in the ward by St Vincent’s clinicians, led by heart failure and transplant cardiologist Professor Chris Hayward, the patient – a man in his forties from NSW who has declined to be identified – became the first patient in the world to be discharged from hospital with the BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart in early February 2025.
Honestly, it took me a while to get my head around how extraordinary this is!
So what’s the big deal? Because before this, if your heart completely gave out and you couldn’t get a transplant fast enough, you were out of options. But this artificial heart buys people time. It keeps them alive and stable long enough to wait for a real donor heart instead of just... hoping for the best.
If this tech keeps improving - which I’m sure it will because it’s also good commerce - who knows, maybe one day we won’t even need donor hearts at all. That’s huge.
Not to mention, this is a massive step closer to…
Something I’m reading
This is not really mainstream news and you may not have come across this unless you’re in or close to the industry in some way. But it’s a big, historical marker indeed! And this story is a well-written, emotional tale that drives the gravity of this home.
This part in particular, I felt, made it quite human.
One employee requesting anonymity related that when the WARN notices were sent to U.S. staff, there wasn’t a town hall or other communication from management, and many initially believed the email to be a scam. But as it became apparent that the ship was sinking, there was anger, tears, disbelief, and panic. There was looting of office items ranging from computer monitors to art that hung on the walls to relics of the company’s storied past such as awards, while employees hustled to retrieve their personal belongings. It was a scene that the source described as “madness,” “crazy,” “sickening” and “heartbreaking.”
Something I’ve been pondering
The quest to figure out what validation will actually make us feel validated is just as painful as - if not more painful than - the quest for validation itself.
We can find ourselves feeling a painful longing for something outside of us to tell us that everything is fine as it is and everything will be ok as it will be.
Alas, the burden ultimately rests with us to figure out the metric and instrument that will make us no longer doubt, regret, and second-guess.
And the responsibility is solely ours to somehow pivot from looking outward to seeking that validation from within, in the here and now.
Thanks and have a great weekend!
Dev
P.S. If you didn’t spot it already, I made a long and deep post the other day after a while.
