Editor:  Paul Watermulder  (disclaimer  —  Allegations of material in this newsletter being false, fraught, frightening or fake news are unequivocally denied by the editor.  Except for those matters in which said editor may have gotten something wrong.  In those [of course hyper-rare] instances, the editor falls back upon the words of Mark Twain:   “The older I get, the more clearly I remember things that never happened.”  Amen.

 

Burlingame Rotary, despite its president being out for the day and subbed by Michael Kimball who was out for the day and was thus subbed by Marilyn Orr [who, as is her custom,  did a splendid job], vehemently denies any allegations of being acephalous. 

 

 

Past, interim, acting, semi-president Orr convened the Club and identified an American flag out the window and down the block, to which we all pledged allegiance at the direction of Captain Michael Harvey (US Army, retired).  But hey, did anybody notice that the flag we used looked amazingly like it belongs to the Burlingame Lions?  Ah well, share and share alike.  One wonders if they also have a president to spare?  No, really, we like ours just fine, thank you very much.

 

Invocator for the day was not present, so Paul Watermulder was asked to sub in:  God’s good spirit was invoked, and we got underway.

 

Guest of the Club:  Doug Bell was introduced by Doug Person.  Mr. Bell indicated interest in becoming a member of our club, and we all were encouraged to greet him personally and get to

know him this week or next.

 

 

Interlude:  Past President Joe La Mariana strolled into the meeting in his full gangsta kit:  broadbrimmed black leather hat, ankle length black leather coat, and who knows what armament and pharmaceuticals could have been along for the ride, given the “look!”  (Sorry, Joe, I got carried away—must have been envious!)

 

Announcement: “Burlingame’s Got Talent” was promoted by Christine Krolik with a reminder that we all are asked / encouraged / nudged to buy a ticket for ourselves and loved ones ($95) as each ticket is a contribution to the Rotary Club for the purpose of supporting our scholarship program for local high school students hoping to head to college.  It turns out a very high % of the high-end restaurants in Burlingame which have been asked to donate food for this gala have said, “YES—where to do I sign up”  So we are looking at a fun and big evening for us all.  Oh, and if you have even a modicum of talent, you are invited to sign up for a 3-minute slot to perform on that evening.  It is a “no-judgement dinner theatre” so come on and sign up; give it a try.  Thanks!

 

Announcement:  Cary Koh reports that Green Hills Country Club has been secured for our annual Golf Tournament – it will be early this year:  Monday, August 28.  Mark your calendar, and no fair scheduling a cruise during that time.

 

Death of a long-time and good member:  Last week, Joe Galligan reported the death of Pierre Bouquet, and this week we passed around a condolence card to be sent to his son and daughter, Mark and Jean.  Bless you, Pierre.

 

Program time came with Bobba introducing our speaker of the afternoon, who had just yesterday arrived from Greece, but was amazingly un-weary.  The presentation by Dr. Orestis Vardoulis, PhD was titled, “Bringing Peace of Mind to Millions of Stroke Patients”.

 

Orestis is a mechanical and biomedical engineer turned med-tech entrepreneur. With his co-founder, Dr. Urs Naber, they identified that 90% of stroke victims do not get treatment due to delays in recognizing the symptoms and calling 911. They started Zeit Medical out of Stanford’s schools of  Bio-engineering and Medicine with a vision to enable immediate stroke detection at home and give every stroke survivor a fair shot at getting timely access to treatment.

 

Orestis explained that strokes hit about 1 million Americans each year and are the main cause of long-term disability.  A stroke is technically a disintegration of blood flow to the brain.  There are two types:  A hemorrhagic , in which case a blood vessel has burst and is losing blood quickly.  Fortunately, those are rare.  Far more common are ischemic, which is a blocked blood flow to the brain, almost always by a clot.  This in turn is treated by one of two methods:  One is a via a mechanical thrombectomy in which case a catheter inserted at the groin travels to the clot which it snags and then pulls back out the catheter.  The second is a drug tPA which dissolves the blood clots before they can inhibit any more blood flow and/or float up to the brain itself.

 

Whew—For those of you who, like me, did not actually attend any medical school classes, that was a complex paragraph.  But Orestis had slides and a patient way of presenting that actually made it (more or less) clear.  Jim Shypertt testified that he is a stroke survivor and is quite thankful for this work being reported on progress in stroke treatment.

 

The key to good treatment (meaning minimal damage to the brain) is speed.  Our presenter and his colleagues and their company Zeit, have invented  the Zeit halo, which is worn at night when a high-risk patient sleeps, and then wirelessly contacts an alarm at bedside if a blood flow interruption is detected.  The patient can take action, while AI in the Zeit halo contacts 911 or other available medical personnel to diagnose and administer TPA as appropriate.  Their early goal for application of this invention is to reach the highest risk patients and to help insurance companies see their great savings by underwriting this procedure rather than waiting to treat a patient who did not have the halo and thus is likely hours behind in notifying 911 or getting into an ER in a stroke center, and thus sustains significant damage and faces long term rehab costs.  The annual cost for care of stroke patients in America is estimated to be $100 billion, with a B.

 

Well!  We were brought right up to the front lines of the international efforts to save lives and to enable stroke survivors to retain much greater mental and physical capacity after their event.  And this reporter couldn’t keep up in the heat of the lecture to report on the parallel work being done by Zeit (which of course means “time” auf Deutsch) to develop a drug which can slow down the brain function greatly while the patient is being diagnosed and transported which buys time to keep brain cells from increasing their death rate when the blood is blocked.

 

Bobba in right in the middle of this high tech, medically intricate work of Zeit, and enabled us to hear as up to date a report on this subject as we could have gotten from their scientists in Greece or Switzerland, on the faculties of Stanford, Dartmouth and other medical centers in Hamburg and around the world.  Rotary has a significant history of interest in medical healing research and applications especially for the neediest of the world.

 

 

All this, plus thoughtful questions too, and still we were out by 1:28pm.  Thanks again to Marilyn Orr for cracking the whip to keep us on point as both our bodies and our brains were well fed this afternoon.

end