Just Had A Sucessful Kidney Transplant

[Don Furr]

That's great news Mark!! Hoping all continues to go well.

[Mike Blakesley]

Glad to hear things are going better this time…. It’s been a long road. Will look forward to future positive posts!

[Sean McKinnon]

Very happy to hear Mark!!!! Im pulling for you!!!

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Back home at last... up over the 7 speed bumps at my complex ouch!... ouch....ouch....ouch.... ouch... ouch.... ouch.... home!

[Leo Enticknap]

Ooh! Good to read that you're back. Sorry about the speed humps. I thought I left those those f*****g things in the rear view mirror when I emigrated from England (where they are pretty much everywhere apart from motorways/freeways), but then discovered that they've been installed in some of the upscale millionaires' streets in Beverly Hills, where I occasionally go to service home theaters. The ironic thing is that they're completely unnecessary: those streets are narrow and always double parked along most of their length, and so it's never possible to drive faster than the limit that the speed humps are designed to impose anyways.

[Martin Brooks]

Mark, good luck with a speedy and complete recovery.

[Scott Jentsch]

Mark,

I think you win the "what I did during the pandemic" contest! Take and good luck with your recuperation!

Scott

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

An update and a little more info on what transpired...
The transplant obviously sent well. But I was still not feeling right. Went to the ER on a Saturday and they admitted me after doing some quick labs. Vanderbilt has its own.automatic blood lab capable of processing thousands of files of blood drawn every day. So I am placed in a room in the Transplant building and I am resting in the recliner and notice blood flowing from my collection.bag. I go into the rest room and hit the call button. Next thing I know is I am being revived and placed on a stretcher. That was the fastest I ever saw a half mile of ceiling tiles go past... Turns out one of the main arteries detached from the new kidney. It took 5 surgeons and 5 units of blood to patch me back together. Had I been at home when it happened I'd be visiting Tom Edison today. So I recovered from this mess and go back home only to be beset by a bad virus. By the time the ambulance got me to the ER, I was doing projectile vomiting. But luckily that cleared up pretty quickly. Got a good report from today's labs and the doctor.

Oh! I forgot to mention that my new kidney missd it's first flight outta Seattle and sat on Ice for 30 hours... apparently a new record at Vanderbilt where they have done over 5k kidney transplants since 1962. The previous resord was 28 hours... Gotta make up some t-shirts that say "My New Kidney Got Iced For 30 Hours" This has caused it to take much longer than normal for it to "wake back up"...

[Kenneth Wuepper]

Hello Mark,

What a marvelous tale of near disaster and incredible circumstances.

You are truly blessed to have survived all of these unique conditions.

Enjoy life and the purpose for which you were saved.

KEN

[John Eickhof]

hang in there mark! thats my biggest fear going into the transplant...thats one reason intermountain turned me down...you can bleed out fast...im waiting for swedish hosp in seattle to do our interview hopefully a second opinion may be positive, anyway, godspeed to you and hopefully the kidney will get fully on line! oh, by the way, paul mundt said to say hi to ya, i saw him a couple weeks ago...finally picked up the ernemann x for the museum that dick bartel had given me...it came with a price tho, when i unloaded and assembled it last weekend, it fell over on me, i now have two broken big toes and my right foot is crushed! i guess im getting too old to horse around 600lb machines anymore! hope ya feel better soon!

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

hang in there mark! thats my biggest fear going into the transplant...thats one reason intermountain turned me down...you can bleed out fast...im waiting for swedish hosp in seattle to do our interview hopefully a second opinion may be positive, anyway, godspeed to you and hopefully the kidney will get fully on line! oh, by the way, paul mundt said to say hi to ya, i saw him a couple weeks ago...finally picked up the ernemann x for the museum that dick bartel had given me...it came with a price tho, when i unloaded and assembled it last weekend, it fell over on me, i now have two broken big toes and my right foot is crushed! i guess im getting too old to horse around 600lb machines anymore! hope ya feel better soon!

Yea, those Ernemann's are killers. I have had several over the years including the one with the built in stool on the base.

[John Eickhof]

mark, they are definitely interesting old machines! i have a pair of silent ernemann IIs and they are 'left and right handed" really neat engineering! i think the model X is from 1950 or so...still has a fixed 1.33:1 aperture so no cscope! boy, the wiring and control circuits are amazingly complicated! i think dick found this mahine out in your neck of the woods many years ago...it does have the ziess-ikon logos but the base and magazines are cast! resembles a AA-II but 35mm only! rest well and keep up the healing...john