TERRE HAUTE —
“YES!!! Colin’s surgical team hands his donor kidney to Caleb’s surgeon, Dr. William Goggins.” #calebskidney
Caleb Johnson and Colin Newton are resting at least somewhat comfortably today after their moment in the spotlight Wednesday at Indiana University Health Hospital in Indianapolis.
The friends didn’t actually witness the “moment,” although they were in the middle of it. The two were under anesthesia as doctors removed one of Newton’s healthy kidneys and transplanted it to replace Johnson’s diseased and failed kidneys. It was all done while details of the surgery were “tweeted” in real time over Twitter for all to follow.
It was a spectacular and dramatic exercise in medical and surgical science as well as in social media communications. Tweets such as the one above were delivered via @IU_Health, the hospital’s Twitter account. There were a number of photos, some of them graphic in nature, posted right along with the verbal descriptions of what was happening in the operating room.
It’s being called the first non-related, living donor transplant on Twitter, and the first Twittercast surgery in Indiana.
Making this more special is that both men are from the Wabash Valley. Caleb is a Sullivan County resident (a 2000 graduate of Sullivan High School), and Colin, also a Sullivan County resident, is a native of Vigo County and 1997 graduate of Terre Haute South.
IU Health Hospital and the surgery patients allowed such incredible public access to this medical procedure for a reason. It is intended to focus attention on organ donation, and more specifically on live organ donation. While live donations don’t occur all that often, they have a tremendously positive impact, not only on the recipient, but on the next person on the donor list who is then that much closer to getting a badly needed transplant.
We have long been an advocate of organ donation, the first step of which is indicating your wishes on your driver’s license. Becoming a live donor, of course, is a different matter altogether, and a deeply personal one at that. But IU Health, at the very least, has made more people in one day think about live organ donation than can probably be imagined. That can only be a good thing in the long term.
We extend best wishes for a speedy and full recovery for Caleb and Colin, whose moving story will undoubtedly be an inspiration to many. And we applaud IU Health for letting all of us share in this extraordinary event.
Opinion
EDITORIAL: Sharing the ‘moment’
IU Health’s Twittercast helps focus us on organ donations
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