The Ballad of Billy The Kidney

The vexed issue of transporting donor organs

Local media has this week reported that Australian scientists have developed an improvement in the solution in which donor hearts are transported – making a donor heart viable for up to 14 hours, as against the current situation of 5 or so hours.

The solution also apparently makes the organ generally more viable for transplantation, even when rapid transfer is accomplished.

The time factor is of great importance in a geographically-large nation such as Australia, where it can be impossible to move a donor organ coast to coast due to limited time frames. 

This would also have effects in other geographically-large nations such as the USA (which geographically is about the same size as Australia) or Russia.

The Australian newspaper reported this as follows:

The crucial extra hours would for the first time allow a heart that suddenly became available on the east or west coasts of Australia to be flown across the country if a suitable match were identified -- or even across the Tasman [Sea, to New Zealand].

This is especially important in the case of my country, which amongst the advanced nations of the world has a poor record of organ donation.

It also appears that this would also open donor organ movement between Australia and New Zealand.

An increase in the range of potential donor organs would, to my untrained eye, appear to be a path to long-term increase in likely success of organ transplants overall.

At the moment this breakthrough is geared to donor hearts. A stated aim of this research is to extend this to other donor organs.

The research for this breakthrough was undertaken at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute of Sydney. 

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Articles in

• ABC [Australia] News Online

• Sydney Morning Herald
  

Image credit:  from the blog Hannah's World

Quick, conductor! The screens!

Dear old CityRail.  Just when I think they can't torment me any further, along come new ways of doing so.

We have a new train timetable coming into effect on October 11.  And CityRail have just announced (or admitted) that not all trains on my local line (the South Coast line) will have toilets.

Now bear in mind, folks, that the trip between, say, Kiama to Central takes over 2 hours.

And bear in mind that there are plenty of people who place value on the on-board loo:

• Kidney transplantees, who are not supposed to place undue strain on their newly-installed plumbing
• Elderly people
• People on chemotherapy
• Children
• And people who just need the loo

To tell the truth, I only ever use the on-board loos in time of dire emergency.  This is because the state of the loos are usually rather disgusting.  But sometimes I just gotta go (especially with all that water that I have to drink).

CityRail helpfully suggests that I just use trains that have on-board loos;  however, the new timetable doesn't give any clues as to which is which.

Oh well!  Back to my motor car and the National Public Toilet Map.

• Image credit: The picture of the Millenium Train parked at Central Station (Sydney) is from Skyscraper City

World Transplant Games 2009 > Day 7

Today I thought we might see how the World Transplant Games are being reported on in the Twitter-sphere.

I'm taking a thematic approach to this topic because I realise that its hard to get a continuous update of results in the way that you would get, say, a continuous update from the Olympic Games in the mainstream media.

Rather, Web 2.0 gives you the chance to pick your own results or follow your own interests.  And it also gives you a result to add your own perspective based on your own preference / interest / bias /whatever.

Twitter is a particularly good medium for this type of reporting because you can in theory blog in from a mobile phone (and not even via the internet on a 3G phone - you can blog in via text messaging).  This means that those using it can be very close to the action, and with immediacy (without having to find a computer).

Now let's see how this translates into action!

A guide to the World Transplant Games on the WWW

This post is subject to updates after publication.

One of the advantages of Web 2.0 is that events that get overlooked by the mainstream media can be covered in a fairly broad way by ordinary folk on the ground - often armed with no more than a 3G mobile phone.

The World Transplant Games is one such event.  Its mostly being sidestepped by the mainstream media, apart from a number of local newspapers with stories about local residents off to the Games.

But there's plenty to still get your interest if you hunt the WWW a little bit.

New Australian Government Organ Donation Scheme Boost to Kidney Patients

The Australian Government has  launched a new human organ donation scheme.

Originally this post was going to be of a slightly I-don't-quite-believe-it nature (hence the picture at the top of this page).  But then I came across a post by Melissa Darnley in Dialysis from the sharp end of the needle referring to Hansard (the record of debates in the Australian Parliament).

So I happily eat my not-yet-published words, and congratulate our new Prime Minister on trying to do something about the appallingly low rate of organ donation in Australia.

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The highs and lows of web 2.0: Lijit and Twitter

Statement of disclosure:  I am employed by the  New South Wales Government as a part-time casual TAFE teacher in the New South Wales Department of Education and Training.  I offer no opinions on the matters following concerning my employer's business.

This weblog is not a techie blog;  heaven knows that there are enough of those (including the rare good one). 

But as the WWW moves towards Web 2.0, I thought I'd make occasionally some observations about my experiences and observations of this as this blog progresses.

• The screenshots from "Morris Iemma" on Twitter are reproduced from builder.au

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Great figures in Transplant / Non-transplant History: Jean Harlow

The first subject in my fortnightly series Great figures in Transplant / Non-transplant History is Jean Harlow (1911-1937).

Jean Harlow was an American film actor who made 41 films between 1928 and 1937.

She is probably best remembered for her roles in The Public Enemy (1931) and Bombshell (1933).

She also appeared as an extrain a restaurant scene in City Lights (1931), a film by Charlie (Sir Charles) Chaplin.
 

The writer Graham Greene wrote a rather memorable description of Harlow's characterisations.  Quoted by The Internet Movie DataBase, he wrote that

Her technique was the gangster's technique - she toted a breast like a man totes a gun.

Jean Harlow died of end-stage renal failure (ESRD) in 1937, well before dialysis and transplant technology had been developed.  At that time, death was the usual outcome for ESRD patients due to this lack of medical and surgical technology.

Suggested websites on Jean Harlow include:

• This YouTube clip from The Public Enemy introduces Jean Harlow's character to James Cagney. It was posted by astique333 (high-speed internet connection required to view this).

• Jean Harlow: the official site
• Wikipedia article on Jean Harlow
• IMdB article on Jean Harlow
• Harlowville
• Who is Jean Harlow? : A SquidWho page prepared by Jaguar Julie

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• The picture at the top of this post is from the Jean Harlow Photo Gallery on Silent Ladies and Gents.
• Would you like to suggest a famous person for this series?

Quick, nurse! The screens!

A new featured (via RSS) blog on the lower right-hand side of this page is donorcycle.  This highlights the unique perspectives of a transplant co-ordinator - the person with just about the toughest job in the world.

One post in particular made me laugh - the one about having to actually use the loo once you have a new kidney.

This prompted several lung recipients to comment on how their first post-transplant sneeze felt like the take-off blast of a 747.

One well-meaning but highly ignorant person at my final job in my former career (pre-transplant) attempted to console me one day (not that I was particularly down, as I recall) by saying, "well never mind John, think of all that time you save not having to use the loo."

(This wasn't true anyway.  Apart from the 27 hours per week I would put into dialysis and further 9 to 20 or more hours per week on related duties - machine set-up, machine stripping and cleaning, stocktake and ordering consumables, going to doctors, and so on - I was still producing about 600mL of wee each day even at my worst stage of the illness.  Not enough to sustain life without dialysis but enough to let me drink 800mL of water per day, or even - gosh! - 1 litre on hot days.  And this is before)

On a tangent, another even-more-ignorant person asked me one day if the many bottles of dialysate I had delivered to work for my home dialysis machine were in fact my blood being returned after being cleaned. 

And he was serious. Just imagine - dislysis by distance delivery.

I mention this as examples of the incredibly ignorant and unthinking things some people might say to you. 

But don't worry!  My response was to use my famous/infamous  sense of humour to speak darkly of a far worse genetic disorder especially prevalent amongst males and that I do not have and that I would not wish upon my worst enemy.

"What's that?", would be the anguished response (especially from a fellow bloke).

"Baldness," I would reply.

• The picture at the top of this post is from DayLife.
• The picture of a Boeing 747 Long-Range Jetliner is from Aerospaceweb.org
• Disclaimer

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POSTSCRIPT -15th September 2008:  As usual I made a mistake in the maths above relating to my daily fluid ration.  (A teacher in my primary school years said I couldn't do maths to save my life, and lo!  She's almost correct!)  I make another attempt below.  If you are interested (and subject to the disclaimer) you are welcome to click on...

A story of DIY dialysis machines

A post in Take: technology on your time shows the work of Dr Malcolm Coulthard in making a dialysis machine for an infant.

This prompted one comment from an anonymous writer who mentioned that dialysis machines in the 1950s were made from converted Maytag washing machines.

Wow!  I better hide the detergent!

The picture at the top of this post is from Case Western Reserve University: Dittrick Medical History Center.