Guest guest Posted November 13, 1998 Report Share Posted November 13, 1998 Greetings Everyone... I'm sending copies of this ZapUpdate to many of my friends still in the news biz, in addition to our regular subscribers. I hope many of you can help us get the word out about our Zap•Life (Living with a Shocking Lifesaver) effort. Submissions for the project are streaming in already.... and what our readers have written is proving to be a real eye opener. I want to share them with you, but will wait so I don't cause anyone to change what they might send. Zap•Life will be a compilation of the thoughts and experiences of Cardioverter Defibrillator Implant recipients, our friends and family members, and our professional health care providers. Ultimately, we hope to publish a book to help others headed down that same scary road that most of us travel... part users manual... part atlas... part bible... part diary... part survey results... maybe even part cook book if anyone offers some heart smart recipes. Contributors will get a copy of the finished project. Access the proper form for making a submission at http://www.duff.net/zapper/zap3.htm Journalist interested in reporting on this are invited to save the file at http://www.duff.net/zapper/media.txt It includes an HTML block for use on web sites, copy for a 15-second broadcast tag to any cardiac related story, and a treatment that is more for information than print ready. If you do the story in any form, please let us know so we may keep you updated on its progress. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ During a quarter century of producing TV news where concise writing (if not brevity) is a virtue, I frequently teased reporters dedicated to verbosity: " Do you think you're getting paid by the word? " If you have read everything coming out of the American Heart Association convention in Dallas you may be suffering from stimuli overload. If writers covering these meetings are paid according to the volume of their output... these folks are going to have a lot of extra money for holiday spending! Our BREAKING NEWS page at http://www.duff.net/zapper/zap2.htm is loaded (55Kb+) with material... even after eliminating items which don't have an apparent or definite link to the research or treatment of arrhythmia. Still, it is worth your time to, at least, scan the headlines posted. While I have had more than a few battles with the AHA over some of their bureaucratic policies... probably few of our readers (as well as the publisher) would be alive without the work this organization does. So far... these are the sources we think are doing the best job of covering the AHA in Dallas: • For Patients & Families: MSNBC (Especially the work of Charlene Laino) • For Professionals: Medscape +CME credits available! • CNN has the best collection of News/Wire/PR Service Reports • NewsEdge is another good source for News Releases • Disappointing coverage: USA Today & Dr. Koop's Community Links are available on the home page of the newsletter: http://www.duff.net/zapper/ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I took a break from reading material coming out of Dallas Tuesday night... to watch the ABC-TV cop show: NYPD Blue. Wow! What a powerful episode. It left me in tears at the end. The drama features Jimmy Smits' character learning he has a fatal heart condition. I don't know if the program adhered to accurate medical protocol... but it sure seemed realistic to me. Watching how the other characters reacted was VERY familiar to what I have seen around me when I nearly died... as well what I have observed during visits to other ICD familes. If you didn't watch, try to catch it in reruns. It's really worth the time! ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Our ZapChat session tonight was another great exchange with many new participants. It was very ironic that two women named who are the same age with the same kind of cardiac challenges met. We also discovered many of us on line tonight have roots from the same areas of the Midwest! We have not had any luck in efforts to get one of the physicians who did the research on pacemaker and ICD threats from security scanning devices. We'll continue trying, and hope to have him, a pharmacist, heart transplant recipient, and many others join us for future ZapChat sessions. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Finally, we close with a few thoughts about the holiday we marked yesterday: Veterans Day. As a former army medic from the 60's, I read a disturbing report about those believed to have survived the war which was not really a war. Since the death of the last of more than 53,000 soldiers killed on the battle ground, an EQUAL number of South East Asia vets are now dead... from suicide. You read that correctly: They killed themselves! How could we have missed the invasion of this deadly enemy for all these years? Why hasn't someone done something to warn soldiers who already risked their lives for us before? Didn't anyone think it necessary to call for reinforcements? Is there anything YOU can do to stop the spread of this tragedy - now a fourth of a century after the killing was supposedly stopped? Sorry for ending on such a somber note, but I thought it was something you should know. Stay well everyone..... and help spread the word about Zap•Life. Duffey ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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