I Heart Guts » liver transplant

iSad

gutsy — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 16:10:40 +0000

We’d like to offer a 21-pancreas salute to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who succumbed to pancreatic cancer last night. Pancreatic cancer is one of the most difficult to diagnose and treat. Mortality is high, and it is generally very painful. If you have not yet watched or read the transcript for the Stanford Commencement speech Jobs gave in 2005, do yourself a favor and check it out. Here’s an inspiring sample: “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”

Longevity Meds

gutsy — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 20:28:39 +0000

Scientists at the National Institute on Aging may have found a fountain of youth in the transplant anti-rejection drug rapamycin. A medication long used to help prevent the rejection of transplanted organs, the drug has recently been found to extend life in other ways — lab mice who took rapamycin had their life expectancies extend as much as 38%. {via CNN}

Liver 2.0

gutsy — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:01:35 +0000

Somehow we missed the newsy tidbit that Apple head Steve Jobs had a liver transplant back in April. “As you may know, I had a liver transplant,” Jobs told the audience assembled for Apple’s music event in early September. “So I have the liver of a mid-20s person who died in a car crash, and was generous enough to donate their organs. And I wouldn’t be here without such generosity.” And here this whole time we thought his pancreas was the one giving him trouble. {via Wall Street Journal}

Guts on Vacation

gutsy — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:06:05 +0000

If you were planning on taking your guts on vacation for a little organ tourism, think again. Organ tourism is a lot like sex tourism, though rather than picking up a prostitute or STDs you pick up a nice liver or kidney instead. Last week China formally announced it was ending its policy of harvesting organs from executed prisoners and starting a volunteer organ donation program nationwide, thus likely bringing an end to China’s thriving black market for organs. Personally, organ tourism brings to mind visions of livers and kidneys sitting on the beach sipping daiquiris. But we know it’s not quite like that.

Heart Topics

gutsy — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:12:33 +0000

A few guts spruced up the tables at the Transplant Ethics Community Education Event, hosted by California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. The event included a lecture on topics vital to people in the transplant community — who gets an organ and when? How will these organs be obtained? All good stuff, we hope the guts were good listeners. {All photos by Benjamin Robert}

After Our Own Heart

gutsy — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:11:41 +0000

Ridiculously cute super-organ art by Hagit Oleg of Tea Party Studio in Israel. I love that the heart looks like a really tough strawberry, and the liver is so very devilish! This was a contract illustration for an article about organ donation in Maariv magazine. There’s also a pretty great drawing of a brain pumping iron in Tea Party’s portfolio.