Natalie Cole is on dialysis

Entertainment Tonight recently aired a lovely interview with Natalie Cole and discussed her current treatment for kidney failure, dialysis, and the possibility of a kidney transplant.

Ms. Cole told ET that her beautiful son and wonderful sisters have already offered to be a living donors.

Currently she is on dialysis 3 hours a day, 3 times a week.

Thank you Grey's!

Thank you Grey's Anatomy for an excellent story on domino transplants!

This episode developed out of a briefing by a transplant surgeon earlier this year (facilitated through Hollywood Health & Society) who discussed the exciting opportunity for domino or paired transplants to help many more people waiting for a kidney.

Jenna Bans, an executive producer for GA, wrote this episode and from IMDB it looks like this is the first episode she has written for Grey's. Jenna hit the mark on this one making the show realistic and inspiring!

Grey's Anatomy "Domino Transplant"

This week on Grey's Anatomy, Bailey heads up a team of surgeons performing a "domino procedure" in which each surgery hinges on the one preceding it.

Grey’s Anatomy was likely inspired by recent real-life “domino” or “kidney swap” transplants. For example:

• Surgical teams at Johns Hopkins performed what is believed to be the first six-way donor kidney swap among 12 individuals on April 5, 2008. The 10-hour surgeries used six operation rooms and occupied nine surgical teams at The Johns Hopkins Hospital http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2008/04_08_08.html
  


• At UCLA, carefully orchestrated surgeries, first in New York and then at UCLA in Los Angeles, represent one of the West Coast's first three-way living-donor kidney transplant chains, and one of the first transcontinental live-kidney donations. http://www.today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/080804_kidney_swap.aspx

Domino transplants are a rare but effective (and dramatic!) way of overcoming the shortage of organs available for transplant.

“This donor chain may enable hundreds of patients to receive a kidney, thanks to one generous altruistic donor, rather than in the past, where only one patient benefited from an altruistic donor. This could significantly decrease the waiting list for kidney transplantation." Dr. Jeffrey Veale, assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and director of the paired-donation program.

The More You Know

Celebrities help educate through NBC's "The More You Know" campaign. The topic this month is the Environment and its goal is to inspire people to make a difference. That is the goal of Donate Life Hollywood as well.

DLH will be working to inspire NBC to make donation and transplant a topic for "The More You Know."

http://www.themoreyouknow.com/

SAW V Blood Drive

What a great movie tie-in, Saw V is promoting a Halloween Blood Drive!

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/sawv.html

Good for the American Red Cross to develop this off-beat connection to a blood-filled movie.

Donation Storyline Honored

Last night Without A Trace received an award for a transplant storyline in their episode "A Bend In The Road."

The Sentinel for Health Awards are presented by Hollywood, Health & Society and the Norman Lear Center and are awarded annually to daytime dramas, telenovelas, children's programming, primetime comedy and primetime dramas that present accurate health information.
http://www.learcenter.org/html/projects/?cm=hhs

Last night's winners included ER, Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, Lincoln Heights, Breaking Bad, As The World Turns, and Pecados Ajenos for topics on alcoholism, cancer, STD's, HIV, mental health and construction site safety.

OneLegacy helped to organize the judging team, including a donor family member, transplant recipient, transplant coordinator and myself, to watch and evaluate "A Bend In The Road." The episode was about a teenager who recieved a heart transplant and went in search of her donor family.

The writer revealed that the idea for the story came from an NPR news segment about a woman who found her donor family.

E.R.'s Dramatic Season Premire

We thank Mr. Crichton and the writers of ER for their season premier, "Life After Death."

Their accurate and sensitive portrayal of Dr. Pratt’s progression to brain death and the valiant efforts of his team to save his life will have a strong, and positive, impact on the public’s understanding and perception of organ donation.

One of the public’s most common fears about donation comes from a misunderstanding of brain death.

“Life After Death” showed viewers the many tests that are performed to determine brain death and made it clear that Dr. Pratt was not on “life” support. Also true-to-life, the number of lives saved through Dr. Pratt’s gift were a source of strength and hope for his friends and family.

You can watch a clip on the NBC website: http://www.nbc.com/ER/video/clips/hard-to-say-goodbye/699221/

Send a thank you note to:

Mr. Michael Crichton
E.R. Creator & Executive Producer
Warner Brothers
400 Warner Boulevard
Burbank, CA 91522