Project Starwars : the origins of a name

En Español : http://es.jjuan.me

Every project deserves a name, and objectives, and a project team….

Once the AML diagnostic was confirmed, it was time to establish a Project Plan. We had the team ( the fantastic medical team at Stanford), the objectives ( getting AML under control and ultimately cured) and finally a NAME.

In this case the name came quite naturally once we saw one of the fashion accessories every Leukemia patient receives at the Hematology section of Stanford :

THE MASK 

This is a professional 3M mask designed to protect people from many types of particles, including chemicals and in this case all type of bacteria, virus and other nasty bugs that can generate infections.

Something that can be irrelevant for a healthy person, can easily kill Leukemia or Cancer patients in the weeks after their Chemo treatment, as their defences are completely down and they have no way to protect themselves from any kind of infection ( this situation is called NEUTROPENIA )

As you can see the mask has some similarities to the StarWars stuff, so that quickly became the name of our project and my nicknames something around DARTH JJ.

Good news is we found some baseball covers to put over the PINK filters ( yes, they don’t have any other color available… )

I had to wear this mask during 18 days every time I stepped out of my hospital room. Welcoming visitors in the lobby area, walking my daily distance across the hospital walkways…. all that time wearing that very uncomfortable and claustrophobic mask!

SO… moving forward we had to innovate!!  

This is the FUTURE OF LEUKEMIA MASK wearing for us and hopefully for Stanford Hospital patients as we are making a formal proposal to their management team to to move to the new generation of mask technologies

A) HANIBAL LECTER model

For low-risk patients who just need ocasional filtering there’s this stylish soft mask still with great and certified filtering

B) STARWARS 2 or alternatively BREAKING BAD

As a replacement of the mentioned STARWARS mask, we found a new generation 3M mask that doesn’t use pink filters and, more importantly, is much much more comfortable to wear and easier to breath through.

So, that’s where STARWARS name comes from and how hopefully it could impact hundreds of patients in the future.