Peter Attia· MD
this one cost 33,000 which of course in the United States that's the cost of like getting your gallbladder removed right I mean literally that's about the cost of a colos cystectomy yeah so it was I mean for us was a big expense but we do a lot quite a few x-rays now our operating the guys actually taken or X-ray techs are the operating room guys like the guys in the operating room that my lab my assistant in the operating room are the ones we taught how to take X-rays and they do a pretty good job we waited that long because we wanted a model that we could use was very small lightweight simple where we didn't have to use the chemicals and developers and all that sort of stuff and we just waited and now we have a model where is it digital it's digital so it's a tiny little device mounted on this little thing and gosh it's like the size of a small like a tiny box that has the X-ray tube in it and it's a laptop and the screen is a operates by bluetooth between x-ray machine and the computer take the X-ray that shows up on the computer screen and it's all there and you can take that X-ray and adjust you can darken it lighten it you can focus in on certain areas I mean it's it takes a beautiful X-ray and you can just play around with it so you really get a nice picture and there's very little variable cost at this point it's it's it's all a fixed cost that you've covered and now it you can the more you use it the better you're getting more absolutely and it's you know the the power is also the other thing was the power needed because we're on 100% on solar we've got a backup generator it's 12 half kilow how long does 12 and half kilowatts last the hospital if the panels were to go out we could run things on it the problem with the rate limiting factor there is the fuel like right now I think we I think we're left with maybe oh so you if you have enough fuel for the generator you could run indefinitely off it if you needed to yeah but I mean we have to give probably big breaks of time you know it's it's a pretty it's a fairly good size thing and the hospital is the only thing that has electricity like you don't have electricity in your home no there's no grid so it's just just the hospital has power that's you know we we run on on the solar I mean pretty much 24/7 we really don't need the as long as the batteries are there and everything's functioning we don't need the generator at all and uh we try to we try to find the time when it's these batteries are going to order a new set and new panels whever we need to reup that so we're I think three years into this set of batteries what about colon cancer do you see that pretty rare we've had what maybe two or three cases in 10 years I mean it's really really rare the folks who are the the most elderly within the community live to what age I mean what is considered old there you know nobody there knows their age you know they don't have any birth records even my wife doesn't know her age she's somewhere in her 30s probably so they don't really know their exact age but I would guess they're probably in other person there are probably be in the 70s and his or her 70s I don't think they they live much beyond that and do you see cognitive impairment in that population really rare you rarely get somebody who say I think this person has Alzheimer's really really rare to see that I mean I think they should die of something else before they reach that stage you just don't see it the point you just made that reminds me there's a m movie which you may have seen it's I think it's called a good lie yes it stars Reese Witherspoon it's a beautiful story yes after we saw the heart of nubo we watched that because I wanted my daughter to sort of understand the history of the Sudanese refugees and that that's one of the points from the movie that I remember being very sort of moved by they were all assigned the same birth because nobody knew their birthday like even something like that that we would take for granted do they celebrate birthdays no nobody does I mean you know my wife we kind of invented a birthday or she invented one on November 21st so when that day comes around we'll usually do something and she's always surprised she like what what's what are you doing oh so she doesn't give me a hard time for not buying flowers if we could buy flowers so it's pretty it's it's pretty easy to be married to a new lady it's you know she doesn't expectations are very low how has your life changed since you've been married I mean do you have a greater sense of obligation to not die to put it bluntly yeah I would yeah definitely so I'm like you know you can't be so cavier with things because now I've got a wife and I wanted to kind of look after her and make sure she's okay there's been a little bit of a change in perspective with that and I think if and when we get children I think that'll change another degree up for sure do you think you could do what you do if you had children I think we could stay there and if things got really hairy we'd have to see how