Medical Miracle

I always joked that one reason why I want to work as a medical social worker is because it is the next best alternative to being a Doctor. Since young, I have this interest about human body and always being fascinated by grossly and bloody scenes, such as the real organs, medical procedure.

I happened to watch this reality tv show "Surgery Saved My Life" on Channel 5 just now, and it showed case an organ transplant at John Hopkins in Baltimore. If you have watched Grey's Anatomy, there is an episode where there are 6 couples who sort of i donate my kidney to you, you donate yours to hers, and she donates hers to him. I thought that it is just one "exaggerated" scene in the drama, and who knows! such programme really exist! Amazing!

It is actually called Living Donation, which you do not need to be related to the recipient. In the show, it has 3 couples -- 3 donors and 3 recipients. There's a father (recipient)-daughter (donor), husband (recipient)-wife (donor), and dunno1 -dunno2 (i can't remember the last couple's r/s). So the daughter donates to dunno1, dunno2 donates to husband, and wife donates to father. The 3 couples are only allowed to meet one another after the whole transplant surgery ends. This to prevent any hiccups, as one person's withdrawal from the surgery, will affect the other 5 people. The surgeries are all one at the same time in one day.

In the show, they really showed the "live" surgery, like how the doctors remove the donor's kidney (and yes! they really used a plastic bag to bag the donor's kidney from the body as shown in Grey's Anatomy!), wash the kidney in cold water, how they connect the arteries to the kidneys and oh, one crucial step is to test that the urethral can pass urine before connecting it back to the bladder! Interesting!

In case u want to know how the surgeries went, the answer is: successful. All the 3 donors are well and kicking.
However, according to the show, the transplanted kidneys will still have 25% chance of showing rejection within the nx 60 days. So, in the end, out of the 3 recipients, only 1 managed to survive. From what I see, the 2 who have passed away, are of older age and seemed to have co-morbidities. One died due to a unusual lung infection (new kidney showed no rejection though), and one died about 4 months later due to heart condition.

I think so far in Singapore, Pierre Png and Andrea DeCruz would probably be an example of living donation. Not too sure if there is any other instances.
If otherwise, I doubt HOTA at this moment can make any significant improvements in expediting the organ waiting list.