Weekend Hospitality

Check out this article from the Jpost :  3 people died last week.  Two from strokes and one from meningitis. We morn their passing and send condolences to their families.  May they find solace and comfort from their friends and family. All three of these people were ADI organ donor card carriers.  Their families agreed upon their deaths to donate their organs to those in need.  Within a 24 hour period, 11 organs were transplanted, four kidneys, a heart, three lungs, and three livers. We give thanks to those who dies and provided the living with another chance at life.  May those living remember these selfless acts and live accordingly. The world can be a good place or a bad place.  A lot depends on how you look at it.

I am a supporter of ADI: The National Transplant And Organ Donor Center in Israel.   The work they do it critical to saving lives.  The organization is involved in education and raising awareness about transplants and organ donation. This past week, I heard about a 5k run to raise funds in memory of three people who died in a car accident a few years ago.   ADI had previously agreed to participate in the event.  A week before the event, ADI pulled out because they realized that the run was in occupied territory, over the 1949 border. I am disappointed with ADI.  As a medical organization, they should be oblivious to borders or politics.  The organization supports and provides services to Jews and Arabs alike, regardless of where they live.  By pulling out of the event, they politicized the issue and left a bad taste in my mouth.  As it happens, I am know that many of the people living in that community carry ADI cards and will continue to do s...

I've posted about them before, but ADI: Israel's National Transplant and Organ Donation Center (hebrew only) is definitely making progress on the education front.   A young woman suffering from diabetes recently passed away and her organs were donated to four patients.  An article in ynetnews reports: Hilla Abramson, a social worker from the central city of Kiryat Ono, suffered from juvenile diabetes since the age of six. Due to the circumstances, she was certain that her organs would not be suitable for donation and therefore did not sign an ADI card... The family agreed to donate the organs after the woman's parents discovered that she was a fan of the ADI organization, which advocates organ donations, on her Facebook account. There are two interesting points to this story.  The first is that Hilla was probably not dead according to the recent Halacha standards.  The article states that she suffered from irreversible brain death, but not brain stem death....

There is an interesting article in Haaretz .  The article touches on three different aspects of organ transplants in Israel.  The first relates to a family that needed to transplant a lobe of liver from the father to his 1 year old baby girl. Two weeks ago, the Shaked-Hadad family from Jerusalem returned home from Belgium. The family's 1-year-old daughter, Elinor, underwent a liver-lobe transplant in Brussels last December. The donor was her father. The operation abroad followed a struggle against the Clalit health maintenance organization, under the aegis of Kav Lachayim, an association that assists seriously ill children. When she was born, Elinor was diagnosed with severe liver failure; her father was found to be a suitable donor. The Clalit HMO wanted the operation to be performed in Israel, but the family argued that liver-lobe transplants have a higher rate of success abroad and insisted that the operation be performed at Saint-Luc University Hospital in Brussels....

An Israeli arab woman from Jaljulia was hit in a traffic accident recently.  She suffers a blow to the head which caused her brain stem to swell.  She was determined to be brain dead at the hospital. The woman's family asked their Mufti for permission to donate her organs and he agreed!  The family told the hospital to donate the organs to anyone who needed it, regardless of religion or race. Three people have new organs (liver and kidney) and one person can now see thanks to a corneal transplant. Thank god that there are good people on this earth.

I saw an interesting article this week about a 47 year old father in Israel who donated a kidney and part of his liver to his 19 year old son.  The transplants occurred over a period of six months, first the liver and then the kidney, six months later.  The articles claim that this type of double transplant is extremely rare, probably because they are from a live donor. What I found most interesting that the articles got a significant amount of press in the ultra-orthodox community.  In fact, I first found the article at Etrog News .  It was picked up by Yeshiva World news and then by the Jerusalem Post and other mainstream papers.  I suspect that the father in this story is ultra-orthodox, but there is no mention of his background in any of the articles. First, the ultra-orthodox condone and encourage live organ donors, so this is indeed a positive act.  Those same organizations are opposed to organ donations from cadavers because of a concern that doc...

There is an interesting piece in the Jerusalem Post : " Sammy Shem-Tov, 67, was arrested Sunday on suspicion of facilitating deals in which patients received organs donated by Israelis who agreed to sell them." The article goes on to say that Sammy solicited organs for sick patients, taking hundreds of thousands of dollars per transplant.  The claim is that only a fraction of the money went to the donors. Having been through the legal process, I'm happy that he has been stopped.  I don't personally think that paying for an organ donation is necessarily wrong.  The big problem is that the financial incentives lead to donations from people who are not perfectly healthy (either physically or otherwise).  Furthermore, this system does not provide ongoing support for the transplant donors. The existing legal mechanism is slow and insufficient, but it does make sure that donors are at a very very minimal risk.  It also provides for follow up medical support to...

The transplant was on Monday afternoon. As I write this, its Wednesday afternoon. Call it 48 hours since my son received his new kidney. My wife and I are taking shifts at the hospital. She had the first night, I had the second. Tonight is her turn again. I just got back from the hospital and that's why there have been no posts. There is no Internet in the transplant ward. Medically, my Asaf is doing VERY well (as is the donor). When we went in, Asaf's creatinine level was about 6.4 mg/dL (GFR: 12). It means that his kidney was pretty much not doing anything. Today, we got the latest results. His new creatinine is 2.03 mg/dL (GFR: 46). That's better than my own and almost in the normal range (0.9 - 1.2 mg/dL). Each day its getting better and better. What this means is that his new kidney is working! He is able to eat a normal meal and is no longer on a restricted diet for kidney disease. This is great news! Our next hurdle is to make sure that his body does not reject the n...

Asaf received a kidney today, May 11th, 2009 from one of our neighbors. We thought this day would never come. The system currently in place is well meaning, but certainly makes it hard and stressful to find a donor and complete the transplant process. It has been about six months since the donor began the process. She was subjected to numerous tests, both physical and psychological which of course, she passed with flying colors. I doubt that I will ever understand her dedication to her altruistic donation, but I will always appreciate it and treat it with the respect and awe that it deserves. Our day began at 5:30am. The donor was hooked up to a drip line last night to make sure that she was hydrated. Asaf was shaved around 5:45 and then had to take yet another shower with antibacterial soap. Around 7am, the donor was wheeled down to pre-op. At 7:15, she was taken from pre-op to surgery. We had a crowd with us at the hospital. The donor's husband, myself and my wife, my s...

Flash: My son's transplant is currently on hold. The hospital is extremely careful with respect to potential donors. For my son, he needs a transplant. There is nothing we can do to change that. The donor, on the other hand, does not need to donate their kidney and should not donate unless they are healthy. Its that last "healthy" that we are trying to confirm. All medical tests needs to be in the normal range in order to accept the donor. Now most people are naturally different. In our donor's case, there are a few minor issues that need to be retested and confirmed before the hospital will do the transplant. We heard about these issues last Thursday. Today we spend the morning at the hospital waiting and doing a few new tests. The donor still has some more tests to complete. It is not important what tests still need to be redone, since that is a personal issue. I can tell you that we redid the tissue matching today. Even though my son and the donor passed ...

This week we received excellent news. The most wonderful person who is donating their kidney to my son has passed all the tests. We scheduled the actual transplant for the week after Pesach. There are still a few re-tests that need to be completed, but it looks like the countdown has begun. Everyone is now excited and nervous. It is one thing to talk about the transplant and another thing completely to actually doing the surgery. It is probably a good thing that we are totally buried with work and the upcoming holiday. We don't have a minute to rest and think about what is actually going on. There is no way that I can express our gratitude to Asaf's donor. I'm reaching out to you, my readers, for suggestions. We expect to be able to tell you the donor's identity at some point, but for now its "The donor!" May we all have a healthy holiday and a good year. Elliot and Leiah

A friend of ours has decided to try and make more people aware of organ transplants.  In particular, we are trying to get people to sign up for organ donor cards.  There are very few situations where it is possible to "harvest" an organ.  The "donor" has to be dead, but still intact enough to keep their organs temporarily alive.  Current medical technology has found that brain stem death meets these requirements.  No one has ever recovered from brain stem death.  The brain stem usually becomes swollen, cuts off its own circulation, ceases to function, and then proceeds to liquify.   The body can still pump blood and breath for up to two days in this state, but eventually, all of the organs shutdown.  People who sign donor cards are telling their families that if they suffer from brain stem death, then their organs should be donated to those in need. Sorry for the graphic description.  This is not an easy topic.   My friend and I have been trying to our local Rabbi t...