Happy Birthday Elizabeth!!

Last night I flew on this little plane to Springfield around to procure a liver and kidney for one of my patients. The patient is someone whom I have been following over the past few years in clinic. Over the past several months he has appointments once a week and has been eagerly awaiting a liver transplantation. He was actually in my office yesterday when I got the phone call that he was the recipient of this donation. It was surreal to hand the phone to him for our transplant coordinator to tell him the news. There is always the fear that upon arrival the donor liver will not be an acceptable organ. Sometimes there is too much fat in the liver or other medical problems making the donor liver inadequate. Of course the patient and his mother understood this but one of the hardest things is seeing someone get anxious and excited for a organ transplant, being admitted to the hospital and then being told 4 hours later that they can go home.

So this procurement had an extra level of anxiety for me. I couldnt help thinking, "please let this be a good organ" over and over. We flew to Springfield via a private plan from a back entrance at Midway around 7pm. A transportation service brings us to the hospital. There was a cardiothoracic team also present from Pittsburg who were planning on procuring the donor lungs. Unfortunatley, they had to reject the lungs for a few reasons. The procurement was intense for many reasons but I was releaved when we boarded the plane again to come home with a cooler (seen above) filled around 11:30pm. That was until we got close to midway and entered a giant thunderstorm. It's a different experience in our small plane.

We went back to the hospital where my patient had already been taken to the operating room. I stayed to observe the liver transplantation, but left around 5am to go to my clinic before the kidney transplant was complete. The operation wrapped up around 10 am.

Now the difficult part begins. I am anxious to see how he recovers from this major surgery. It is a slow and teniuos process, but a potentially life saving one. As you can tell the last month has been intense and difficult, but I am really enjoying my final fellowship and feel like I am excited every day and learning so much.

So- happy first bday to my little niece. I will be spending the weekend celebrating with her and will blog about that next week!