This is why I don't flip channels . . . usually. I was going through my meager number of stations when I came across the public television station. Within 5 seconds I had said "Ugh! Ahh! Ick!" concerning the introduction images for the program which was about to air.

But I was hooked, I had to see the brain surgery, I had to see the (artificial) limb replacement surgery . . . I had to know! So there I was, shunning American Idol, but like a magnet- stuck to the lives of these two people going through crazy tramatic surgeries on camera.

One was a 60 something woman who had been blind for almost 30 years. The doctors were implanting electrodes on her brain to stimulate her visual cortex. The desired result was for a camera attached to a pair of glasses to feed images to a computer, the computer to translate them to the brain, and the brain to translate a dot matrix to the eye. She could "see" what they called phonemes- twinkling dots outlining contrasts. A $100, 000 dollar venture to see twinkling outlines. Risking death or brain damage-- I'm not sure I'd be able to go so far. She had 40 wires coming out of two "ports" in the back of her head, and a bulky, heavy computer to wear around her waist. The doctor called it a "vacation from blindness" not a cure. But he hopes to advance it into a cure in the future.

A special note for the roomie: they stuck her head back together with "biologic glue." Which to me looked Abysmal with a capital B!

The second person on the show was an older Norwegian man. He had lost his leg in a hiking accident. He was getting a titanium rod implanted into his bone so that he could attach an artificial leg without the use of a vacuum seal (which is how most artificial limbs are attached.) It was stated that "the discovery of titanium's adaptability to living tissue was an accident." The doctor then said, "I was implanting titanium in rabbit's legs . . . " Wait a minute? An accident?!

"I accidentally implanted a titanium rod in this rabbit's leg . . . " Or was it more like, "Well, I was implanting things into rabbit's legs, you know, to see what would happen . . . I implanted bologna, taco shells, pink erasers ( What floats aside from wood? more wood! rocks! small churches!) nothing happened. Well, of course the rabbits died, but aside from that, nothing, until I implanted the titanium!"

Anyway, this procedure was over 90% successful. But for some reason, which they didn't explain, it had only been preformed on less than 100 patients.