7/14/2003: Heart from transplant

Twelve-year-old Shane Bowman plays with his old heart in Edmonton, Canada on Friday, July 11, 2003. Bowman had a heart transplant and got a chance to see his old heart to have some closure on his illness. Bowman had dialated cardiomyopathy, a condition caused by a virus, and his heart was enlarged to about 555 grams. A normal heart is about 200 grams.

Imagine playing catch with your own heart.

Hey that's handy... in coming years he can hand it to girls & they can stomp on it... it'll save them the trouble of ripping out of his chest first.

No, the ripping it out part is the best part! I know it's my favorite part of getting screwed over.

If Rho gets a kidney transplant, we could all play catch with the kidney at a future GTG.

Imagine all the Love that guy must have had in his huge heart! It's gargantuan! How did that fit inside him?

That is completely amazing.

hmmm... the 'Heart Diet'

Look at the fatty deposits surrounding it... I don't think that's necessarily normal. I used to work at a butcher shop and (granted, I'm not really an expert in HUMAN hearts... actually I'm not really an expert in any hearts, I guess) you don't usually see that much white stuff around the heart of a young animal.

I wonder if it's a side effect of his disease.

I dunno; I seem to remember quite a bit of fat around mammal hearts that I've dissected. Of course, I'm no heart expert either.

I wonder if they carry that philosophy forward to other kinds of operations. It would make sex changes interesting.

"Look at the fatty deposits surrounding it... "

Can you say suet?

It's what makes a Spotted Dick so light and fluffy! Ahh, British food!

They make the outie an innie don't they?

big hearted kid.

It must have been hard to breathe with a heart that big. There's only so much room in the rib cage.

What they neglected to mention is that heart transplants are not maintainence free. The 10-15 years later the immune system figures it out in spite of the drugs, and you need a new one.

The tissue matching is not finished until after the surgery has started, and is used only for making a guess at the dosage.

The first year survival rate is about 83%.

Welcome to the Cellar, Hampor. You mean every dozen years another heart? Damn that could get annoying and expensive. Most insurance has a lifetime total benefit of a million or something.

From my understanding, Hampor is right. The times can vary, but a family friend was given 10 years with his new heart. He's currently had it for 16 and is in great shape.

I've heard that about outie becoming innie. I guess you could use the skin for the new vagina, but after moving the urethra, it seems like you could just schlop it off.

Outties are indeed turned into innies. Watched an operation done once (kinda that sick curiosity you get from buzzing around places like rotten.com) and it's basically what you'd think. They skin the member, dig a hole, and line the hole with the skin. The leftovers are incinerated with the rest of the biological waste.

Now excuse me, I have to go apologize to my penis for remembering what happened in that video.