Bringing a Liver from a Dead Donor to a Kidney Transplant: Marzena, a Patient with Multiple Types of Respiratory Disease, is Sufficient
But in order for a kidney transplant to succeed, she needed a liver first. Stasieluk’s disease had been controlled for more than a decade but worsened during Covid-19. It wasn’t so bad that she would be prioritized for a liver from a deceased donor, her family said, but bad enough that a kidney transplant likely wouldn’t work.
Her mother is a subgroup of patients who are called “highly sensitized.” She and her mother have the same blood type. It’s much harder to find a match because Marzena had a high number of antibodies against foreign tissues.
“She needed a new liver to do a kidney transplant. Her immune system was not what it was due to her own illness, says Jennifer, 29. “So, they kind of, like, threw their hands up and were just, kind of, like, ‘sorry.’ ”
In January 2020, an appointment with Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, introduced a new idea: Doctors suggested Marzena get a portion of a liver from a living donor.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/24/us/chicago-nurse-organ-donation-btc-ctrp/index.html
Getting a Liver Transplant from a Child’s Kidney: An Insight from an Experienced Donor with the United Network for Organ Sharing
We never imagined that I would be a direct match. “I was excited for it. I was not nervous. I knew that I was in good hands.
On June 25, 2021, Jennifer gave her mother a lobe of her liver. Jennifer spent five days recovering in the hospital, and Marzena spent 11. Recovering from a transplant can be difficult for living donors and recipients, but recovery for mother and daughter was successful.
“It was awful. Marzena lives in Illinois and she said people sit there for three hours a day. “My kids and my grandkids are the whole world and that’s why I was fighting for so long. I want the kids and my grandsons to stay with me.
Taner said the Stasieluks are the first case he knows of where a patient’s immune response can allow for a transplant from the same donor. They’re planning to write a case report about the procedures.
Nearly 106,000 people are on the national transplant waiting list according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. Over 40,000 transplants have been performed so far this year.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/24/us/chicago-nurse-organ-donation-btc-ctrp/index.html
A Patient’s Story of Donation and Rejection: A Journey Through the Life of a Person that Done Two Organs, What Do You Say to Her?
Jennifer described working long, late shifts as a nurse helping patients and their families during the height of the pandemic. Hope was hard to come by when answers were few and there were dark days.
Having the power that I have to help her and save her life is awesome, and knowing that there is something I can do that’s not lost was great.
I’m grateful today. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to say enough, thank you,” Marzena said, fighting back tears. A person that donated two organs, what do you say to them?
The central biological puzzle of transplantation remains unsolved despite their story being technically dazzling. In most cases, our bodies recognize foreign tissue and send a battery of B and T cells to kill it. As identical twins with identical-enough tissue types, the Herricks sidestepped this problem. If kidneys were ever to become a mainstream procedure, doctors would need to address our innate immune response. Early efforts subjected patients to full-body preoperative blasts of X-ray radiation at borderline-lethal doses. The intent was to crush the immune system, then let it rebuild with the new kidney in place. This was done with an injection of bone marrow. Most patients died of diseases like Organ Rejection and Graft Versus Host Disease. The field of transplant surgery became desperate as it grew. Citing the fundamental precept of avoiding unnecessary harm, the more conservative medical practitioners of the day vilified the practice. A detractor wondered when colleagues would stop experimenting with human beings. And when will they realize that dying, too, can be a mercy?”
I remember waking up in the deep end, then falling asleep, due to the bright lights. I remember lying naked under blankets in the ICU, mildly delirious from morphine while watching a movie about a plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness, with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin fleeing a giant grizzly bear. I remember friends visiting me on the recovery floor, and how it hurt to laugh.