[Music]
i was at lunch at work
and scrolling through facebook and seen
a post
a woman at work she was asking for help
her husband needed a liver when i read
that post it was like i knew what was
this match
and then i called the doctor and they're
like yeah
it's what happened that started the
whole journey
i think most patients know that they're
able to give one of their kidneys but
there's still a lot of people that are
unaware that we have the ability to
remove a portion of your liver we have a
right side of the liver and a left side
each side is referred to as a lobe the
lobe we remove that goes into the
recipient grows to the full size of a
liver and the lobe that is remaining in
the donor also grows or regenerates to
the full size of a liver we don't ever
grow back the lobe that was removed but
both the donor and the recipient end up
with a full-size fully functional liver
[Music]
in the 20 years we've made some changes
for the donor side
we've made the operation a little bit
smaller and more minimally invasive
we've made smaller incisions
our technique here makes a small
incision that we just kind of work
through the small incision to take the
liver out it's a relatively uncommon
technique but in the end with both the
minimally invasive technique as well as
our technique with a mini incision
you basically end up with the same
incision size and the outcomes are
pretty much
similar don't be afraid of
the process don't be afraid of the
surgery
they'll walk you through it they'll take
good care of you the team on the
transplant floor the nursing staff was
outstanding the physicians were
outstanding
i really
felt okay
didn't have a ton of pain and you know
functionally i was doing very well
it's no different than any major
abdominal operation or shoulder
operation it takes time to recover most
people who donate have never had surgery
before so coming out with a large
incision is still different but they
still they in the end they function as
normal as anybody else after surgery
once we remove the portion of the liver
the piece or the side that's remaining
in the living donor
grows and that act of growing or
regeneration is a very metabolic process
that takes a lot of energy
so patients will often complain of
fatigue as probably the biggest thing
that they experience post-sliver
donation but it wasn't it was
minimal i mean maybe out of the three
months i might have had
you know five six seven days that
happened that i was just tired and
exhausted and slept a lot all day
there are lots of places that do
hundreds and hundreds of living donors
but then you feel like a
cog in a wheel rather than a person and
our goal is to maintain that personal
connection the entire time
it's more than just providing the right
medications and the right procedures at
the right time it's caring about how
people's spouses and children are
holding up
how they're holding up
i think our approach has always been to
do the right thing we do what's right
for the patients
i always say our living donors
are angels on earth
and i'm proud to say that of the
some hundred fifteen hundred twenty
living liver donors
none of them
said that they regret going through the
operation when we asked him that
question do you have any regrets would
you have not gone through it not that
you've done the operation they would say
no never
which means we've done our job right all
i had to do was say yes the surgeons did
the rest of the work and i'm just
grateful for the opportunity to be able
to do it and that you know everything
has been so successful it's a wonderful
team down here and i look forward to
doing what i can
to support others
that may want to go through the process
as well
[Music]