Heart Patient to Receive Dose of Anniversary Cheer

--Consuming only liquids, dependent on a respirator but grinning at his nurses, retired auto worker Murray P. Haydon marks his first year of life on an artificial heart today. Family and hospital staff will gather in the Humana Hospital Audubon auditorium in Louisville, Ky., to cheer Haydon, 59, one of two permanent implant recipients still alive, said Donna Hazle, Audubon’s director of public relations. During the first year, Haydon escaped brain-damaging strokes that have troubled William J. Schroeder, the longest-surviving artificial heart patient, who was given a mechanical heart Nov. 25, 1984. But except for a few weeks in June, Haydon has never been free of the respirator, first because of what doctors called psychological dependence and later because of chest and lung infections. Haydon is unable to speak or eat solid food because of the respirator tubes in an incision in his throat, she said. But Haydon writes notes and uses hand signals to converse with his wife, Juanita, his children and grandchildren and doctors and hospital staff members. “He communicates a lot, but not verbally,” Hazle said.

--”The first thing to remember is that women do not lose their femininity and daintiness just because they joined the Army,” says writer Jeanne Westin, a WAC during the Korean War who hopes that her novel, “Love and Glory,” and the CBS mini-series from it will dispel some of the misconceptions about military women.

--A team of Purdue University students used a picture of Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi, a Barbie doll and a Hostess Ding Dong cake in a 27-motion toothpaste dispenser to win the school’s 1986 Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. A $150 cash prize and traveling trophy were awarded to Robin Barnett and 13 teammates for inventing “the world’s most complicated toothpaste dispenser,” the school announced in West Lafayette, Ind. The winning device first released a spring, which released a Hostess Ding Dong, which flew through the air and hit a picture of Kadafi. Two croquet balls then caused a water-loaded rocket to shoot out and pull a string, which released a pin. That activated a Barbie doll and a King Kong doll to climb the side of a model of the Empire State Building. The climbing action pulled a string that set off a switch to turn a water wheel in an aquarium. The water wheel set off another switch, which started a drill press that squeezed the toothpaste tube, forcing toothpaste onto a waiting toothbrush. “All this in less than four minutes,” said team member Rich Kulawiec, a graduate student in electrical engineering. “You can brush your teeth in a jiffy.”