Comments on: Your patient needs you as much as the new heart.

Your patient needs you as much as the new heart.

crunchland — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 16:26:12 -0800

Virtual Heart Transplant Surgery

Why?

By: Meatafoecure

Meatafoecure — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 16:28:29 -0800

Please tell me this is not true.

By: RogerB

RogerB — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 16:30:33 -0800

So now he has one! At this rate Cheney might be fully human in as little as fifteen more years.

By: anewnadir

anewnadir — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 16:30:41 -0800

After playing this game, I feel that I am ready, willing and able to perform open-heart surgery on Dick Cheney.

By: Meatafoecure

Meatafoecure — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 16:33:26 -0800

TLDR... Good on him. I hope he does well.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 16:40:40 -0800

Someone call up Scalia, the future of the American healthcare system is here now.

By: Trurl

Trurl — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 16:46:10 -0800

"Don't touch the sides!"

By: griphus

griphus — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 16:49:18 -0800

Hey, remember playing Life and Death 2? Here you go.

By: oneswellfoop

oneswellfoop — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 16:50:45 -0800

Cheney gets a heart transplant? What an argument in favor of Death Panels.

By: symbioid

symbioid — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 16:54:06 -0800

GODDAMNIT, I tried slicing the hell out of the patient w/the scalpel, and it won't do it. Call me when I get more realistic blood gushes at my failures.

By: symbioid

symbioid — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 16:54:33 -0800

RogerB: "So now he has one! At this rate Cheney might be fully human in as little as fifteen more years." never.

By: Cool Papa Bell

Cool Papa Bell — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 17:03:58 -0800

"Oh, wow, I'm in heaven. This is wonderful. I get to be with God and Jesus and Uncle Steve and Grandma. And hey! It's my dog, Scraps, from when I was a kid! Oh, it's great to see you, Scrappy-boy! What's that? They transplanted my heart into who now?"

By: squalor

squalor — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 17:10:24 -0800

Exclusive background info on the donor.

By: Splunge

Splunge — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 17:10:35 -0800

First I asked him if he had insurance. He didn't answer. I took it as a no and did not do the surgery.

By: XMLicious

XMLicious — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 17:11:21 -0800

Cheney gets a heart transplant? What an argument in favor of Death Panels. Pretend it's Cheney!

By: birdherder

birdherder — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 17:12:25 -0800

from here:

Cheney has suffered five heart attacks, the most recent in 2010, according to the AP. He underwent bypass surgery in 1988 and two subsequent angioplasties to clear narrowed coronary arteries. A former heavy smoker, Cheney had a pacemaker implanted in 2001.

Perfect candidate to receive a heart transplant!

By: squalor

squalor — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 17:15:55 -0800

What if it rejects him?

By: griphus

griphus — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 17:21:02 -0800

If the incantation works, there shouldn't be a problem.

By: madamjujujive

madamjujujive — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 17:22:12 -0800

And there was much rejoicing.

By: Mcable

Mcable — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 17:26:37 -0800

You know, when I saw the ticker during the OSU - Syracuse game at dinner about Cheney, I was looking forward to the Metafilter thread on this. I was not dissapointed.

By: Foci for Analysis

Foci for Analysis — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 17:31:58 -0800

I tried to cut off one of the obviously cancerous nipples with the scalpel but wasn't allowed to. Fucking bullshit, man. I have 12 medical degrees from some of the net's mostly respectable medicine schools and you don't think I'm qualified to diagnose nipple cancer? Keep dumbing down the kids and maybe they will end up at Jon Hopskins or some dump.

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 17:38:21 -0800

Now if we could only get him a brain transplant.

By: DrMew

DrMew — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 17:44:35 -0800

So we get to play a mostly white surgical team saving the life of a black man, rather the reverse of the actual situation, in which African Americans are much less likely to receive a transplant than white patients (see here).

By: oneswellfoop

oneswellfoop — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 17:55:18 -0800

Borowitz nails it (as he so often does). As part of a government contract signed while he was still Vice President, Halliburton performed the reconstruction work on Mr. Cheney's circulatory system at a cost to taxpayers of $14.2 billion.

By: maudlin

maudlin — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 18:21:39 -0800

If any of you knew how truly dreamy Cheney was when he was younger, you'd have a lot more compassion for him. And for God's sake, at least he has a heart that pumps now. He can't sneak up on you like a Prius of doom any more.

By: briank

briank — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 18:35:33 -0800

Lucky for Cheney that he gets that gold-plated health insurance Congress voted for itself years ago. You know, the kind nobody else in America can have because it's "socialist".

By: TedW

TedW — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 18:47:27 -0800

That was sneaky! I played the game and was all set to offer a scathing critique, and wondered why all the Cheney comments. Well done! Is it too much to ask that like the patient in the game, Cheney's transplant was done without the benefit of anesthesia?

By: LionIndex

LionIndex — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 19:13:54 -0800

Oh, like Cheney can feel pain anyway?

By: Splunge

Splunge — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 19:41:55 -0800

Yes. He can. Any time that anyone, anywhere enjoys anything... Any time that there is happiness. Any moment that people of different races get along... Any fucking time that any being on Earth has a moment of joy, Cheney experiences a jolt of agony. When Bush was president, he used to also get jolts of pleasure from the pain of liberals and democrats. Those jolts of pleasure caused his heart problems, they were too many and too sharp. Now he's kept in a cylinder of transparent aluminum. He is suspended in a solution of tears from the disenfranchised and the urine of a demon conjured by Jeb Bush and Ann Coulter. There he rages in mute agony. He wishes to create a new Bush. But his hands are chafed and useless from constantly masturbating to video of Ronald Reagan saying, "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." Yet he still has great power. While the doctors and scientists that keep him alive try to contain his evil persona, there are outbreaks. They keep a close watch on the news and try to quell the bursts of evil paranoia and fucked up stupidity in people that are susceptible. And so the Republican party continues. Tainted by the evil that is him.

By: arcticseal

arcticseal — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 19:55:29 -0800

Isn't this a waste of a perfectly good heart? As others have mentioned, with his past medical history, he's hardly a good candidate. At least with the smouldering core of hate that they removed to make room for it, we should be able to power the Eastern seaboard for a couple of decades.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 21:16:55 -0800

Heh, weird. Even with a silly cartoon game it seems so weird to cut people's bodies open with saws and whatnot.

In early July 2010, Cheney was outfitted with a left-ventricular assist device (LVAD) at Inova Fairfax Heart and Vascular Institute to compensate for worsening congestive heart failure.[160] The device pumped blood continuously through his body.[161][162] He was released from Inova on August 9, 2010,[163] and had to decide whether to seek a full heart transplant.[164][165] This pump was centrifugal and as a result he remained alive without a pulse for nearly fifteen months.

It's easy to make a joke about Dick Cheney's robot heart. But, how do you make a joke about him replacing it with a 'real' one? Something about still having a human soul?

By: neuron

neuron — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 22:14:10 -0800

Remember when Cheney got drunk and shot that guy in the face? Good times.

By: OsoMeaty

OsoMeaty — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 23:10:45 -0800

That game was really disappointing.

By: crunchland

crunchland — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 03:36:30 -0800

Isn't this a waste of a perfectly good heart? As others have mentioned, with his past medical history, he's hardly a good candidate. -- Sounds like something a DEATH PANEL would say.

By: Samizdata

Samizdata — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 06:42:18 -0800

Yeah, ummmmm, something about that fact I should not be allowed to be the world's first mouse-driven cardiac surgeon... And that something is uproariously funny.

By: XMLicious

XMLicious — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 07:01:19 -0800

But, how do you make a joke about him replacing it with a 'real' one? Something about still having a human soul? This is a little bit Pepsi Blue but rather than this happening through surgery I imagine it more like the scene in the commercial I saw yesterday for a new Snow White movie where the evil queen grabs a young courtier by the face goa'uld style and sucks her life force out, leaving the withered husk to fall to the ground as the gray streaks in her own hair fade away.

By: crunchland

crunchland — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 09:03:50 -0800

Cheney doing well, at home after heart replacement surgery. (photo)