Wisdom of the Body: 015. Katherine Standefer on Living with Technology in Your Body

015. Katherine Standefer on Living with Technology in Your Body

Dec 11, 2020

Katherine Standefer is the author of Lightning Flowers: My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life, a book that tells the story of her rare medical condition and the complicated relationship she has with the defibrillator in her chest. With recognitions from the New York Times, O Magazine, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, Kirkus Review, People Magazine and NPR's Fresh Air, she provides a unique perspective on what it means to save a life, and how, like the farm-to-table approach to dining, we need to understand what goes into the technology we use.

In this episode we discuss:

Katherine Standefer’s phenomenal book: Lightning Flowers: My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life
Life with getting an implanted cardiac defibrillator at the age of 24
How her device misfired and ultimately led to more health risks
Katherine’s complicated relationship with her defibrillator led her to dive deeper and find out about the device's roots
What really goes into saving a life
How to look at medical devices and all objects as sacred
The organization My Heart Your Heart, which recycles and restores pacemakers
Living with damage caused by a medical device
How each of us can sit with the idea that someday we will die
Having a life-threatening condition without health insurance system in the US
The mines in Africa where the materials for many of our devices from
What Lightning Flowers are
What Long QT Syndrome is