What do you mean you can't beam me up yet?

Perhaps there are no flying cars or floating cities on clouds like they promised us when I was a boy. But we do have a lot of the gadgets from Star Trek.

• Cell phones with Bluetooth earpieces work better than the Star Trek communicators.

• PDA’s that do more than Spock’s Tricorder

• GPS navigation systems for exploring earthbound routes

• Tazer guns that stun like their phasers set on “Stun” mode

• Big screen liquid plasma displays look like the display screen on the bridge

We have the Internet with Google searching gives us more information faster than the Enterprise’s sexy super computer.

And as broadband wireless technologies advance, we have access wherever we are.

But we can’t beam ourselves around with Transporters yet though. If we had such a device, imagine how many people would be crowded onto the Caribbean beaches on February Fridays at 5:01pm?

My wife Darlene had surgery last month. She has a degenerative spine, and there is no way to surgically repair it. So in February she had a device implanted into her rear end that attached to lead wires that extend up into her spine.

When the device is turned on, it sends pulses at various rates into her spine that block the nerves from feeling the pain that usually extends down through her hips and legs. She has a little remote control that allows her to switch the programs to changes the beat and intensity of the pulses.

• She has a program for standing and walking.

• She has a program for sitting.

• She has a program for lying down and sleeping.

It doesn’t have an MP3 player … yet. But I expect the next model will, playing the music inside her brain. Downloadable plug-ins will make her butt-cheeks bounce to the beat.

The device implanted in her bum has a lithium battery. She has a recharging belt, that when your place the charger over the device, will somehow recharge the device battery through the skin without any harm or odd sensation. It even has cell phone like icons to show how good the connection is and when the battery is full.

She is still recovering from the surgery, feeling better day by day. That is why it has been so long since my last posting here. But she is slowly coming to the realization that this device only turns down the pain. It doesn’t cure the pain.

Our hope was that this device will allow her to be the happy person she was a few short years ago. The jury is still out on its success. But one thing is for sure…

I am married to a Cyborg.

I may well find myself assimilated.