A friend did a dirty deed last week and sent me a picture of myself from a dreaded side view. Not nice. My gigantic stomach looked like it was about to blot out the sun. Our gorgeous villa at the resort is pretty close to perfect, except for the large mirror in the hallway which you are forced to traverse and which displays an equally charitable view. Will definitely request a different room next time with a more forgiving mirror. I need to start watching the calories again. I kind of feel like octo mom before her larvae had all hatched out. Since the heart troubles started, my cardio has definitely suffered and even though I am strong and in the gym four days a week, I am in full lard ass mode. The flaky almond croissant I ate this morning, which is best of class west of New Orleans, certainly didn't help.
Last night I went to see my old college roommate Dave Jacobs, who is in Palm Desert for a major computer conference where he is unveiling a big software revision today. David has founded a company, Silverstone Solutions, which has created a very powerful software that matches available kidneys with potential transplant recipients. He told me that he has saved twenty lives so far but is understandably struggling to find capital in this tough economic time. Dave is a kidney transplant recipient himself, suffering from the same polycystic condition that claimed his brother and father. Link to his website here.
Kidney Paired Donation matches two or more incompatible donor/recipient pairs with alternate, compatible pairs. This concept has been around since the 1990s and is viewed as an innovative way to reduce the number of people on the national kidney organ waitlist. However very few actual transplants had been performed, due to complexity of understanding the millions of combinations possible, the difficulty of sharing patient information between individual clinics, and the general lack of efficient, high-quality analysis and case management software.
"After experiencing the excruciating wait for a kidney and learning about the problem first hand, I knew I had to do something to help. I am a software guy, so I approached this as a software problem," said David S. Jacobs, Founder and CEO. "My first goal was to save two lives and we did that with the first transplant in February 2007. I then moved the decimal point to the right and set the goal at 20 lives saved. We achieved that in 2008. Now the goal is 200 lives saved and enough funding and support to move the decimal point two places to the right--20,000 lives!"
Silverstone Matchmaker is an advanced enterprise software application that provides doctors and clinicians with the tools necessary to rapidly and accurately match living organ donors with patients who having willing, healthy, but incompatible donors. Using advanced matching algorithms, Matchmaker can evaluate all potential 2-way, 3-way and with version 2.0, 4-, 5-, and 6-way combinations in minutes, saving transplant clinics the months of work previously required to assess just a handful of pairs.
The new version of Matchmaker adds advanced optimization technology, which determines the most number of transplants possible for the pool and guides clinicians through the decision process.
In addition, hospitals can now add lists of compatible living donor pairs, which has two benefits. One, the original recipient can find a more suitable living donor organ and it significantly increases the match percentages for the pool overall.
While version 1.0 was focused on single center solutions, version 2.0 is designed to handle the largest single center or multiple transplant hospitals providing solutions for groups of hospitals or regional networks.
More information about Paired Kidney Donation is available at http://www.silverstonesolutions.com/paired_donation.html.
I hope that David can secure adequate funding for this very worthwhile venture. Even though he asked me when my baby was due last night. I will be saying goodbye to my left kidney in the next two months. It is conceivable that I will need another one some day. Dave was a VP at Macromedia and Marimba and definitely could have been doing something more lucrative in his field but chose to instead create a legacy for his children and thousands of other sufferers of kidney disease. Wish him well.
1 comment:
i totally relate to the mirror thing; my stomach is ridiculous...speaking of apples, try the produce section at Albertson's, they must have 15 varieties, and the produce manage (the big red-headed friendly guy) is very accomodating, he'll whip out his knife and cut you a slice so you can sample them;i tried a new one yesterday that i think is pretty darn good, called Pacific Rose, very crisp and sweet, not tart..i'll be saying a little prayer for you on AFD, i have faith you will pull through just fine...
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