MAR-B-6
“LONG-TERM FOLLOW-UP”
NOW PASSED THE SILVER ANNIVERSARY OF AN OPERATION DONE
ON MY BIRTHDAY
Hi Glenn,
We continue to enjoy the
blessings of 26 KIDNEY YEARS thanks to your
wonderful knowledge and
expertise! Joe will be 70 next
week! Doesn't
seem possible!
At 33 Mike finally got
married in July to a young lady from Bosnia!
He
is teaching at LSU in Baton
Rouge.
We enjoy your travels so
stay healthy and enjoy those beautiful
grandchildren!!
Warm Regards,
Joe and Barbara
Speaking of the Ninety and
Nine who are never heard from again! Here is the exception that makes that rule
irrelevant!
Joe is a patient of mine for
whom I did a kidney transplant on twenty six years ago, and he has written me a
"new birthday" card on the anniversary of that event each year 26
times over. He is probably the only one
who has done so, although I have had notes form some who have sent a note on
the tenth or twentieth, or, by now, the thirtieth anniversary of those long hard
nights in the OR doing all the arranging like a one-armed paper hanger. In Joe's case, I remember
"harvesting" the kidneys from a two-year-old trauma victim--a
headline that read "From Tragedy, the Gift of Life." It is to this new life that Joe attributes
his youthfulness and vitality, having had--as he, a mathematician/engineer
would say--a "youth transplant."
This marks the first year
the annual anniversary greeting has turned electronic!
Fifteen years ago, I
attended the wedding of George Franklin and Miss Coleman--two patients on
dialysis together for many years whom I had transplanted a few months
apart. They had each gone through
considerable complications (in her case, a reoperation for a reimplant after
necrosis of the renal pelvis, and in George's case, getting a second transplant
about four years later) but about ten years later they married, and I got a
chance to stand between them at their altar ceremony in a big black Baptist
church in DC. I recieved a later birth
announcement from them as well.
So, now, this one of the
flock DOES make it seem like a worthwhile expenditure of effort back then!
GWG