Transplant reflects surgical leap in S. Dakota
Gillette News Record | Associated Press
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. â€" A reunion of two friends recently brought new meaning to the notion of giving and receiving.
Ben Ekrem needed a kidney.
Mary Crandall gave him one.
They met in the 1990s, when Ekrem and Crandall’s husband, Doug, worked together in the insurance business in Sioux Falls. They and their spouses met again Tuesday at Avera McKennan Hospital to take part in a medical oxymoron â€" a routine life-saving procedure. Wednesday morning, Crandall was asleep on an operating table, where surgeons removed one of her kidneys. They stored it in a bowl of crushed ice and walked it next door to another operating room, where Ekrem waited to receive it.
Ekrem and Crandall thus took their place in medical history. They were transplant number 995 at Avera McKennan. Doctors there expect to reach 1,000 in a few weeks.
The milestone might rate someday as a footnote to the two friends’ experience. But to Ekrem, age 51 and a diabetic for 30 years, it was about liberation from four-hour sessions on a dialysis machine. To Crandall, 48, giving up a kidney was a matter of being a good citizen in the human family.
“Do you know the expression ‘to pay it forward’?†Doug Crandall said of his wife’s decision.
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{Register to be an organ,eye and tissue donor. To learn how, www.donatelife.net or www.organdonor.gov}
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. â€" A reunion of two friends recently brought new meaning to the notion of giving and receiving.
Ben Ekrem needed a kidney.
Mary Crandall gave him one.
They met in the 1990s, when Ekrem and Crandall’s husband, Doug, worked together in the insurance business in Sioux Falls. They and their spouses met again Tuesday at Avera McKennan Hospital to take part in a medical oxymoron â€" a routine life-saving procedure. Wednesday morning, Crandall was asleep on an operating table, where surgeons removed one of her kidneys. They stored it in a bowl of crushed ice and walked it next door to another operating room, where Ekrem waited to receive it.
Ekrem and Crandall thus took their place in medical history. They were transplant number 995 at Avera McKennan. Doctors there expect to reach 1,000 in a few weeks.
The milestone might rate someday as a footnote to the two friends’ experience. But to Ekrem, age 51 and a diabetic for 30 years, it was about liberation from four-hour sessions on a dialysis machine. To Crandall, 48, giving up a kidney was a matter of being a good citizen in the human family.
“Do you know the expression ‘to pay it forward’?†Doug Crandall said of his wife’s decision.
Read more
{Register to be an organ,eye and tissue donor. To learn how, www.donatelife.net or www.organdonor.gov}
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