Going Nationwide?

It is a delightful Monday morning (yes I know "delightful" and "Monday morning" are an oxymoron) and I am trying hard to fulfill my obligation to you, The Readers, to post just as much Transplant Trib blather as you can possibly stand. Today, I have completed my weekly labs here in town and Cheryl, Diana and I are trying to make a plan for today.

NATIONWIDE?

Recently we here at the Trib Executive Offices were contacted by a firm that represents AlloSource. This company is a non-profit organization that secures, processes and distributes materials used in various forms of soft-tissue transplants, known as allografts. I am inserting a brief description from their website of these transplants here:

"Approximately 1,500,000 allografts are transplanted each year for a variety of life-saving and life-enhancing surgeries: bone grafts for patients whose bones have degenerated from cancer, cornea transplants to help restore sight, heart valves to replace damaged heart tissue, skin grafts to save the lives of burn victims, and tendon, meniscus and soft tissue replacements to help people lead more active lives. One tissue donor can save or improve the lives of up to 60 people. Currently, there are nearly 36 million Americans with debilitating musculoskeletal conditions who might benefit from an allograft."

AlloSource have been following this blog (unreal!) and would like to add a link to their website here to make people (like you, faithful fans) aware of these very important transplants. Their goal is to make more people aware of allografts and the need for increased donor registration to assist in these and other organ transplants. Hopefully the word may be further spread by your humble Transplant Trib and more donors will officially register to give those in need these life-saving procedures. I urge you to take a look if and when the link appears and discuss these transplants with your families and friends in order to inform them and to hopefully expand the donor community.

ANSWER TO AN FAQ

I believe I am somewhat prepared to take on one of my pending inquiries. This one comes to us from Suzie S. who is a proud resident of Berkeley, CA. Her question is :

"Greg always described you as having an amazing sense of humor but by the time we were seeing you regularly, you weren’t such a funny guy. Now you are, instantly, a very very funny guy. So what’s it like to (a) have lived without that side of yourself (b) to have it return so precipitously? (Your blogs are very entertaining—thinking of publishing on paper?)"

Gee, thanks Suzy. Sorry to have been such a downer all this time. Seriously, you are 110% correct in your assessment of my demeanor. We have known Greg for many many years and as a matter of fact when we first met way back in our college days I was (to be honest) a total scream. Or so I am told. At any rate when I had to leave work, start the long long transplant process and generally adapt to decreasing health I became quite depressed and therefore depressING as well. As you can imagine one's sense of humor is indirectly proportionate to the level of depression so my funniness factor went straight into the can, so to speak. That is mostly why you observed me to be, well, sort of a silent Sam when we started regularly socializing. Besides which my hearing is sort of deteriorating so a lot of times my silence was due to just not hearing you. To directly answer your (a) question , it was miserable. I felt as if I had nothing, let alone humor, to contribute to a conversation. We found that Cherie was in fact filling in more and more of the gaps for me (once again cue The Band "I don't have to speak, she defends me. It's a drunkard's dream if I ever did see one"-Up on Cripple Creek) and I was falling more and more back into the quagmire. I was losing interest in a lot of things, including to a degree even racing (never before publicly divulged) which is a sure sign that something was horribly wrong.

Post-transplant I did undergo a significant change. Please do not pressure me into instant laffs but yes I do enjoy writing this blog. The main reason for such a profound change has simply been that the intense thought of the ultimate bad outcome was increasingly hanging over me. As the heart attacks continued and got more and more frequent, I could not help but wonder which one could be the last. While I have never in over twenty years of heart issues had one that could be described as "massive" the rising frequency became more and more worrisome. Our last mad midnight dash to the UCSF ED from Livermore was way more tense than I let on to My Driver, and it was all I could do to keep passing hospitals (Highland? No thank you. Sorry Taryn) on our swift journey to The City.

Now I have a young heart and kidney. This of course does not award me immortality. There are plenty of other diseases out there, and the long-range success rate of these transplants is excellent but not 100%. And I could get hit by a bus any old time as well. But not to sound corny but I have been granted a very special second chance and that cannot help but to loosen and increase sence of humor, interest level, general happiness and optimism. That last dash to the ED looks a lot less imminent and this can only be considered a Good Thing. So to fully address your part (b) I can safely say it feels awesome, like a whole new part of my life has started.

And you ask if I am considering "publishing on paper". I would have to say "No" but thanks for the question. For now this little outlet for my nooz and views is just fine.

Sorry gang, I have gotten rather long-winded today. You could always take a comfort stop halfway through this ordeal if necessary; I promise I will not be offended.

"How's your Monday?"

Bob/Irv