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Imagine being a parent and your child becomes ill and soon dies. The doctors all but confirm the death was caused by meningitis. Your only solace is your family’s belief your child could live on by donating his youthful healthy organs.

All the proper tests are said to be done and you move on as best you can after burying your beloved child.

Then to your horror you learn your son did not die of meningitis but a very rare and fast moving lymphoma cancer. That is what happened to Lisa Koehne and her son, Alex according to news correspondent, Nancy Cordes.

Both the recipients of Alex’s pancreas and liver died. The two men who received his kidneys had their organs removed and are currently undergoing chemotherapy.

Dr. Lewis Teperman, Director of Transplantation for New York University Medical Center was quote as saying, “It is a rare event.”

Maybe so Doctor but a tragic one that snowballed into a nightmare for five families.

What can be done about the screening process to avoid such a devastating series of events from happening again?

There should be some sort of wait period or way in which to harvest the organs and keep them until they can be tested for cancer before they are put into a dying individual who thought they were giving a gift rather than a shorter death sentence.

For those against organ donation it is a call for science to experiment and develop the types of implants that can act as a pancreas, liver and other organs within the body without causing more harm to the recipient.

If they can build an artificial heart couldn’t they build artificial organs to replace those that are no longer working in the body? Maybe these discoveries are not so far away and can add years to as many lives as organ donation has proven to be successful in the lives of dying patients.

Dr. Tomoaki Kat, a Miami transplant surgeon removed five organs in order to take out a tumor from a 63 year old woman.

During a groundbreaking 15-hour surgery, Dr. Kato’s team opened Zepp’s abdomen like the hood of a car and took out the entire engine: her stomach, pancreas, spleen, liver and large and small intestines.

The organs were chilled while surgeons detangled the two-inch tumor from Zepp’s aorta, the main blood-supply to those organs – and two other arteries.

Once the tumor was out, the organs, connected to new Gortex blood vessels, went back in.
“I’m shocked looking at it,” Kato said. “While we were watching she was like, ‘oh my goodness.’”

Now three weeks since the surgery, Zepp is looking at herself from the outside in – grateful that her gamble seems to have paid off.

“I thought it would be better to take a chance on living than on dying soon,” she said.

Zepp also said she want to prove to the world that inoperable cancers can be operated on. Her cancer is now gone, and she’s heading home.

This article appeared on AOL this morning. I found it amazing that they could put her organs on ice while the doctor took out her tumor. Imagine the kinds of surgery that can be done with this technique. People may very well live to be over a hundred years old if cancer and heart disease can be removed from our lives.