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http://img.timeinc.net/time/magazine/archive/covers/1967/1101671215_400.jpg
Wiki says that Dr Barnard was very photogenic. Yes, that he was, as you can see from his pic above. But I doubt if it helped him in his surgery, but it did for his popularity no doubt.
The details were few and far between but the most acclaimed fact was that the patient survived for all of 18 days after the transplant. I then recalled my Father's fond joke:
"The operation is successful but the patient died"
Anyway, by 1971, Dr Barnard had achieved the remarkable feat that his latest patient went on and on and got to live for 23 years!
Well, that evening on the lawn bench was the first I heard of transplanting a human organ...I was not quite up-to-date on medicalese.
I come from a seaside village, Muthukur, which was surrounded by fertile rice fields and Father used to take me to his bit of a half acre to show off the rice cultivation.
And I learned that first the rice seeds are thrown haphazardly in a bit of wet nursery while the rest of the field was getting prepared. And after a few weeks by when the seeds sprout, the seedlings are transplanted by hands of ladies in their furrows in the entire farm:
And a few months later the crop is harvested, again by poorly paid ladies:
And after winnowing and such post-harvest operations the paddy is transported to the nearest rice mill in Brahmadevam, this time by men and bullocks:
Apparently the otherwise strict traffic police of Hyderabad gave a 'green channel' for the dead man's liver...something reserved for the live Chief Minister and his Police Chief. And the liver reached the hospital from the airport in flat 20 minutes while my living liver would take anything like a couple of peak traffic hours:
What amused my cruel heart was that the agricultural terms, 'harvesting', 'transporting', and 'transplanting' took place in a haphazard order than my Muthukur rice and the dead donor was a farmer.
Just now Ishani came to my bed and watched me for a few seconds and asked me:
"Granpa! Why do you do blogging?'
for which I had no easy answer.
...Posted by Ishani
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That is a fun-pun on church organs.
One lazy evening in 1967, I was lounging on the lawn bench of our Faculty Hostel at IIT KGP smoking a thoughtful Wills Flake. And then there was a commotion and my friend VR came and sat by my side and broke the news that the first heart transplant on a human being has been successfully done by one Dr Christiaan Barnard. And I asked him if it was done in America or England, the only two countries we cared for then.
VR replied, no, the achievement was from South Africa which we knew only for its apartheid and Pollock Brothers.
Dr Barnard's picture duly appeared on the front cover of the next week's Time magazine in our Faculty Club:
http://img.timeinc.net/time/magazine/archive/covers/1967/1101671215_400.jpg
Wiki says that Dr Barnard was very photogenic. Yes, that he was, as you can see from his pic above. But I doubt if it helped him in his surgery, but it did for his popularity no doubt.
The details were few and far between but the most acclaimed fact was that the patient survived for all of 18 days after the transplant. I then recalled my Father's fond joke:
"The operation is successful but the patient died"
Anyway, by 1971, Dr Barnard had achieved the remarkable feat that his latest patient went on and on and got to live for 23 years!
Well, that evening on the lawn bench was the first I heard of transplanting a human organ...I was not quite up-to-date on medicalese.
I come from a seaside village, Muthukur, which was surrounded by fertile rice fields and Father used to take me to his bit of a half acre to show off the rice cultivation.
And I learned that first the rice seeds are thrown haphazardly in a bit of wet nursery while the rest of the field was getting prepared. And after a few weeks by when the seeds sprout, the seedlings are transplanted by hands of ladies in their furrows in the entire farm:
And a few months later the crop is harvested, again by poorly paid ladies:
And after winnowing and such post-harvest operations the paddy is transported to the nearest rice mill in Brahmadevam, this time by men and bullocks:
But yesterday I read this titillating news item in DC:
"The liver from a brain dead farmer from Visakhapatnam was harvested and transported to Hyderabad on Tuesday morning to be transplanted in a 63-year-old patient in Global Hospitals here"
...DC Wednesday 29 April
Apparently the otherwise strict traffic police of Hyderabad gave a 'green channel' for the dead man's liver...something reserved for the live Chief Minister and his Police Chief. And the liver reached the hospital from the airport in flat 20 minutes while my living liver would take anything like a couple of peak traffic hours:
What amused my cruel heart was that the agricultural terms, 'harvesting', 'transporting', and 'transplanting' took place in a haphazard order than my Muthukur rice and the dead donor was a farmer.
Tough Question
"Granpa! Why do you do blogging?'
for which I had no easy answer.
...Posted by Ishani
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