Friday, February 9, 2007Breaking News: New Allocation Procedures Proposed By American AgencyIn this story in the Chicago Tribune (registration required), the Tribune reporter talks about changes to the American system which allocates the organs of deceased donors to those waiting to receive them. This allocation agency is called the Organ Procurement and Transplant Network, or OPTN, and it... Sign in to see full entry.posted by kidnykid at 6:42 AM Comments (0) (link) Sunday, January 28, 2007My name is Sweetness, and I like to danceThis is the requisite Chicago-themed Super Bowl post. I couldn't let the week go by without at least a mention of Walter Payton, Chicago's favorite transplant candidate. Not too long before his death, Payton announced that he had primary sclerosing cholangitis, an unusual liver disease. He was in... Sign in to see full entry.posted by kidnykid at 2:59 PM Comments (0) (link) Tuesday, October 17, 2006The problem of consentIn the last entry in this blog, I noted that the type of transplantation mentioned in the Star Trek: Voyager episode entitled Phage is very difficult to perform. It isn't a technical problem, either, which makes these transplants difficult - it's the consent issue. That very issue is dealt with in... Sign in to see full entry.posted by kidnykid at 10:06 AM Comments (0) (link) Sunday, October 15, 2006The PhageWe have been borrowing and watching past episodes of the series Star Trek: Voyager. In that series, the writers present a species called the Vidiians (I hope I'm getting the spelling of that species right), afflicted with a microorganism called a phage, which infects all of their organs chronically,... Sign in to see full entry.posted by kidnykid at 5:51 PM Comments (0) (link) Sunday, September 17, 2006A new take on wife-swappingThis article tells the story of what amounts to a four-way kidney swap. For argument's sake, let's call these people Couple A and Couple B. Husband A agrees to donate a kidney to wife B (who is a compatible recipient). In return, Husband B agrees to do the same thing for Wife A. Just read the story.... Sign in to see full entry.posted by kidnykid at 6:13 PM Comments (1) (link) Friday, September 15, 2006Just a reminderThe original purpose of this blog was to discuss organ donation - please consider donating at least your solid organs. I know someone in Canada who just got a transplant after being on dialysis for nearly four years. People die waiting all the time. In fact, if you take a look at the URL for this... Sign in to see full entry.posted by kidnykid at 4:49 AM Comments (1) (link) Thursday, September 14, 2006Is she the world's longest surviving kidney recipient?On one of my kidney-related email lists, I posed the question: Who is the world's longest-surviving kidney recipient? I got this Mayo Clinic link in response. I can remember a time when someone who had been transplanted five or seven years had had the transplant a long time. Well, here it is, over... Sign in to see full entry.posted by kidnykid at 2:44 PM Comments (0) (link) The world's longest-surviving heart recipientThis link tells the story of the world's longest-surviving recipient of just one heart transplant (although I imagine there are longer-surviving recipients of several hearts). Stories like this make me (a kidney recipient) want to give him a run for his money! Sign in to see full entry.posted by kidnykid at 11:07 AM Comments (0) (link) The color of money, in the health-care industryIn earlier posts in this blog, I've discussed the cost of prescription medication. As a transplantee myself, I understand this problem intimately. It's not unusual for a month's worth of transplant meds to cost several hundred dollars - a bargain compared to some anti-cancer drugs, but still steep... Sign in to see full entry.posted by kidnykid at 10:28 AM Comments (0) (link) Tuesday, September 5, 2006You mean Hawkeye Pierce transplanted CHIMP KIDNEYS?Keith Reemtsma was a transplant surgeon who died in 2000, at age 74. Perhaps his greatest claim to fame is his experimentation with xenografting. In 1963 and 1964, he transplanted chimpanzee kidneys into thirteen patients in kidney failure. Twelve of those patients went back into kidney failure... Sign in to see full entry.posted by kidnykid at 1:32 PM Comments (0) (link) |
|