[UA] The Invisible Hand

[Jon Capps]

Stolze wrote:

> If I recally correctly, a healthy liver can regenerate, right?

To an extent.  A healthy liver does have some regenerative ability, but I
was way too far gone for that, and my liver wasn't exactly healthy ;)

> (this is a little murky in my memory), the liver is divisible -- that is,
> you can give someone HALF your liver and, if all goes well, eventually the
> lost portion grows back.

It's called a living donor transplant.  I don't know if the liver actually
regenerates the donated half back, but I know this has been done before.  I
have only heard of it being performed on kids, with one of the parents as
the donor, but I don't know that it *can't* be done on adult patients.  It's
pretty much an emergency operation to keep the patient alive until a more
suitable, complete liver can be found.

Back in '89, on a Friday morning, the docs told my parents that I wouldn't
live through the day unless a donor was found (I had been comatose since
that Wednesday).  They told my parents of this procedure, and had them
tested to determine which would be the better donor.  They also said it had
never been done before, and still had to get the hospital ethics committee
to approve the procedure ;)  A donor was found before the test results came
back.  A few months later, the first living donor transplant was performed
in Australia.

> All I have to say is: Damn.

Ha~! I haven't even told you about my trippy dreams while comatose, my crush
on Stormy Jones (first person to have a simultaneous heart-liver
transplant--we were the same age, and were often in the hospital at the same
time), the inexplicable details of my hepatitis, or the doctor having to
hitchhike to the hospital (with a six-pack sized cooler containing my
soon-to-be liver) because the ambulance had a flat tire (true story).

Jon Capps


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