Closing Thoughts On The 2008 Transplant Games

I realize I am going on and on about these Games but they were a big deal for me, both as a goal to strive for and use as motivation to rehab, and also as an experience. Over 6,000 people attended including athletes, living donors, donor families, and volunteers so it was pretty exciting.

I was caught up into my own drama so it took me a while to realize that the athletes, while a big part, weren’t the most important part. I was talking to a woman from Kansas City while watching basketball. It was half court games and Team Pittsburgh was on one half and Team Mo-Kan was on the other so we ended up next to each other, each rooting for the other’s team in addition to our own. She pointed out that they didn’t have a coach, but there was a high school basketball attending the Games for the first time who was getting into them and was considering coaching for the next one.

I asked her what organ he had transplanted and she said no, he was here supporting his wife. When I inquired about her, she said no, she wasn’t transplanted either. I was confused and she clarified — the wife had lost her son and donated his organs, but was having a difficult time coming to grips with her loss, so her husband brought her to the games to help process her grief. That was a light bulb moment for me.

The woman to whom I was talking had her own story. Her son had been a deceased donor 17 years ago, and on the court playing basketball was a guy who had recently had a transplant whom her son had played soccer against in high school. That was an important thing for her.

I often found myself at a loss when speaking to donor families. I never had to process the emotions that goes with receiving an organ from a deceased donor, as my liver came from a living donor, my son Marken. Nor had I really thought deeply about what a donor family goes through. If I end up going to another Games I will be more sensitive about that.

The cutest thing at the Games were the little kids. At Track and Field, they had some 25 meter events. One was the Diaper Dash, for transplanted kids under age five. The finish line was thick with photographers for that one. Here is a shot I got from the stands:

Before the race, a father went out on the track with a boy about 2 1/2 years old. He had him do a practice run. While the kid was able to conceptualize starting and running in a lane, he missed the part about finishing. He crossed the line and kept going with the rapt focus of a little kid bent on a mission. His mother was yelling at him to stop but he wasn’t hearing her. When she realized he wasn’t stopping, she started to chase him but she seemed unaccostumed to running and wasn’t gaining on him very fast. She kept yelling and eventually broke his focus so he turned around after an extra 25 meters and came back. So cute.

There was a toddler in the girls Diaper Dash who was motivated through the race by her mother backing up in front of her with a bottle.

In a older girls group, one of the under 10 year old ones, a girl did the race in a four wheeled walker.

She started out running but then heard the crowd roar and stopped to look around. Her family was yelling at her to keep going and she would run for several meters and then stop and look around again. She did that a few times but did finish. Several young girls who looked like her sisters then smothered her with huge hugs.

I told Tulasi that that was going to make the highlight reel and in the 10 minute montage they showed at the Closing Ceremony, sure enough there she was.

For those who can’t get enough of this stuff, here is a group blog from a sorority, Phi Sigma Sigma Foundation Blog - Aiming Higher. They volunteered as a group to help keep the Games running. It has a lot of posts from several perspectives that if you are really interested in the Games are worth reading through. It is also an example about how an event can be be experienced dynamically by making a group blog.

Here is a taste:

“One thing that happened today was we met an amazing athlete, Dan from Philadelphia. Dan was in the 500 freestyle race in the swimming competitions and seemed to be struggling to finish. He had 8 laps to go and needed some encouragement.

“Every Phi Sig at the games stood at the end of his row along with his four children and wife and cheered as loud as we possibly could. One of the other swimmers in the lane next to him started to swim alongside him to help him along and then after 2 laps the other three swimmers who were done came to the other lane next to him and all four of those men swam alongside Dan to get him through his laps. I have never experienced such an amazing thing in my life!”

 

“Greatest Embrace” by Lisa Lynne Mathis

This road’s been long
Now I must go
If I could I would stay
But what is true
In your heart you must know
I’ll see you again someday
I’ll see you again someday

I held on
As long as I was meant to
I held on longer still
I’m safe in this place
Where I’ll be forever
And I will wait for you
Yes, I’ll be waiting for you

When you come for the greatest embrace
That you will ever receive
You will see there had always been space
For the joy that you need to just keep on living
I’ll be waiting
And one day I’ll be in your arms again.

Can you believe that I am there with you
As you move through your day
I know you’re sad
But if you do love me
You’ll give all you have to each day
And love with abandon
And pray

When you come for the greatest embrace
That you will ever receive
You will see there had always been space
For the joy that you need to just keep on living
I’ll be waiting
And one day I’ll be in your arms again.

We may never know why
But then logic and reason
Never applied to our love anyway

(This was sung by Lisa Lynne Mathis herself at the Closing Ceremony of the 2008 Transplant Games)

 

My US 2008 Transplant Games 800 Meter and 20 K Results

Tulasi went with me for the last two days of the Games. On the way to Carnegie Mellon for the track and field events, I was expressing to him the intrepidation I was feeling about the 800 meter (1/2 mile) run I was registered for. I was seriously, at least emotionally, considering not doing it. When we walked into the stadium and saw hundreds of spectators, I was even more convinced I shouldn’t do it. Part of my reasoning was the avoidance of embarrassment and the other was the concern that my time would be so slow that I would hold up the schedule of events. My conditioning hadn’t gone as well as I had hoped for since signing up and running the whole distance wasn’t going to happen.

I went consciously early to the venue to be able to absorb the mood. At first, it was not good. Men and women were streaking down the track. After about an hour or so I saw that between events they were leaving a little extra time, so the too slow excuse drifted away.

When it was time for the 400 meter (quarter mile) 50-59 women, one of them jogged for about 20 meters and then stopped and basically strolled around the track. 400 meter is once around the track, 800 meter goes twice. As she came into the home stretch, the crowd was cheering loudly. That decided it for me. If she could do it, I could do it.

I went down to the infield to get my number, which was 7, for lane seven. I did my warmups and stretching, hydrated and conversed with other guys to pass the final minutes. I used to get a little jittery before a soccer game or whatever as the adrenal gland would start anticipating, but it has been so under worked the last few years it has gone soft and wasn’t helping much.

The organizer called us over to give us the last minute instructions. He looked at my number and said he would have to change it to 8. I took that as a good sign. Whenever I had a choice in the soccer league, I would always get the number 8 for my team shirt.

The starting pistol went off and I started chugging away. I went about 50 meters before I had to drop down to a walking speed. After that, I would walk for 20- to 30 meters to catch my breath, then jog for 20-30 more. I alternated like that for the rest of the way. Just before the end of the first lap, the winner of the event blew by me but he was the only one who lapped me.

I jogged the last 30 meters before crossing the finish line. The crowd was cheering and to give them a little thank you I did a kirtan dance move, a triple twirl at full speed moving forward before taking the final step across the line.

If I were to do this again at the next Games in two years, the goal would be to at least jog the whole race. Plus I would be moving up in class from 50-59 to 60-69 age group, though the guys running that class weren’t any slouches this year either.

I wasn’t planning on doing another Transplant Games but they announced at the Closing Ceremony it is going to be in Madison, Wisconsin in 2010 so I am considering it as my wife has family near there and it is close enough to some of my extended family so they might be able to attend.

FYI, my wife was working in the transplant unit in Madison as a nursing assistant in 1970. They were doing kidneys at that time and the success rate was low. She actually helped some doctors who were still experimenting on dogs. The hospital was next to Sterling Hall and she was working when the bomb went off. It shattered windows in her building.

After we left CMU we stopped at a restaurant for some carbo loading for the 20 K bike race the next day. A couple of Team Pittsburgh members were there and waved when we entered. Each team wore distinct colors, so we recognized each other. After ordering I went over to talk to them for a moment. They asked how I was doing so I told them about my 800 meter and how I was inspired by the lady’s 400 meter.

It turns out that the woman at the table was the lady’s post transplant co-coordinator (an RN who oversees your care, the person you interface with) so she knew her back story. The woman had had a double lung transplant and suffers from asthma, so simply finishing her 400 meter was a huge thing for her.

The next day was off to North Park for the 20 K (12 mile) bike race. I had gone there once before and done a test lap so I knew there was a bad hill. It goes up for a mile nonstop then a couple of hundred meters at the top that are really steep. It was two 10 K laps, so that meant tackling the hill twice. I went with the idea that I wasn’t going to be able to finish the race — my goal was to finish one lap.

Two things fell together. First, it wasn’t humid at all, which meant my on board cooling system (sweating) was going to be effective, and the temperature was reasonable, about 80 F (27 C) which wasn’t bad. The second thing was the race start had been changed to the foot of the hill, so the worst thing was if I couldn’t make it the second time, I could simply turn around and coast back home. I was leaving the door open for the second lap.

About halfway through the first, the young studs starting lapping me, whizzing by. These were young guys who were kidney recipients, though in at least one case, a liver transplant, who were athletes before their transplants and obviously recovered fully. Quite a few of them passed me and, just before the end of my first lap, the leader in the women’s group lapped me.

At the end of the first lap, i stopped and got off my bike, but I was feeling decent and had decided to tackle the second one. I drank up and did a breathing exercise Balarama Candra had taught me. He is friend of mine who is a yoga instructor. I felt my rear tire was a little low so Tulasi hustled up an air pump and tightened it up. After a couple of minutes, off I went again.

Both times I had had to dismount for the last couple of hundred steep meters on the hill and walk up. The second around I took another two minute break and did the breathing exercise again.

I did manage to finish, in 1 hour, 50 minutes. Out of 60-70 bikers I beat two women. One had a twenty minute mechanical breakdown that required repair. I beat her by 5 minutes. I beat a 70 year old woman by 20 minutes. So my results weren’t stellar but I exceeded my goal of one lap by finishing both so I was happy.

More on the Games tomorrow.

 

2008 Transplant Games Opening Ceremony

The night before the 5K run, I attended the Opening Ceremony. There are something like 1300 athletes participating in the Games plus living donors and donor families who are being honored. Everyone marched into the ceremony, first the athletes by teams, then the living donors, and then the donor families.

Prior to walking in, we all assembled in a big room next to the ceremony room. While waiting I noticed some kids from the Florida team in a soccer circle using a beach ball to kick around so naturally I had to join in.

Unfortunately there is no 3 v 3 soccer competition in the US Games but at least I got to kick around a ball for about half an hour and I only almost collided with a passerby once. The slow travel time of the beach ball made me look like I knew what I was doing.

Once everyone had filed in and gotten seated, the program continued with lots of heart tugging stories and music, much of it original music sung by transplant recipients and donor family members. One was by the wife who donated her husband’s organs and tissues. A baby got one of his heart valves and the chorus to her plaintive country song contained the phrase “This morning you woke up in the heart of a baby.”

Too many stories to recount, including one by a woman still on the transplant list about the number of times she has been called in for a transplant and it hasn’t happened for reasons like the organ didn’t match or whatever. Still waiting.

One guy got up with three strapping young lads and told the story of how his life has transpired since his heart transplant and then introduced the boys as the brothers of his donor.

The one story I will relate was by a 25 year old woman. She got a heart transplant when she was just a little baby, one year old, 24 years ago. A baby picture of her was shown on the big screens. The donor was an 18 month old baby girl. Her picture was also shown so it really involved the viewer, made it very personal.

As she had dual Norwegian and American citizenship, King Olav of Norway had personally convinced the Norwegian government to pay for the operation and lots of people had been involved with getting it to happen, including Barbara Bush and Super Bowl winning quarterback Joe Thiesman. Her parents had met the parents of her donor family on the Today Show while the operation was occurring but then lost contact.

When she grew up, she had a desire to met the donor family. There is a process for this to happen so she went through channels and sent a letter but never heard back. As it turned out, the donor family never got her letter.

Last April her Blackberry buzzed and she saw she had a message on her MySpace page. It was her donor family who had googled her and found her page. They talked and decided to meet at the Transplant Games.

After she told her story, the mother and sister of the baby whose heart she has came up on stage. They had just meet a few hours before. The doctor who had performed the transplant operation was also brought up on the stage.

Although most events happened after the opening ceremony, some swimming events had happened that afternoon. The girl had won a silver medal and she gave it to the mother of her donor. Very touching stuff.

The official story:

Starzl gets transplant Olympics started

 

5K Run (er, ah, walk) At 2008 Transplant Games

The 5 K race had over a thousand people it seemed to me and I may have even heard that figure at some point. It was a big mass of humanity at the beginning and took me a while after the starting horn blew to even get to the starting line. It was pretty crowded at first but started to thin out as those who were actually running or jogging the race moved ahead of the bulk of the people who were walking it.

I set out at what I estimated to be the pace I could maintain until the end. Many people were passing me, I was passing some. At about the half mile mark I passed a girl on crutches and after that the number of people I was passing slowed down. I’m not making that up — a twentysomething girl was doing it on crutches and while I never noticed if she finished, she was chugging away with the heart of a champion and I suspect she did. She was passing people.

The race went out on streets but at the halfway point turned back on a path along the Allegheny River. When I got past PNC Park(Pirates) and was heading for the finish line at Heinz field (Steelers), I knew it was only a few hundred yards more so I tried to jog but wasn’t very successful at that. I could shuffle for about 10-20 yards at a crack and then have to drop back to walking, so alternated until the finish line. Unofficially, looking at the finish clock, I made the 5K (3 miles) in 50:10, well short of the overall winning time of 15:04. That time was by a supporter, and I missed how fast the winning organ recipient’s time was.

I did get the older classes times for recipients as they were giving the medals on the spot. If I had been in the womens over 70 class I would have won. The winner was over 60 minutes, around 1:03 or so. She gave the key to your winning success, “You don’t have to be fast to win, you just have to be old.”

If I had been in the over 70 men, I would have taken the bronze metal as his time was over 54 minutes. Surprisingly, the winner in over 70 transplanted men was around 25 minutes, which would have also won the gold in the 60-69 mens class.

The top time in 50-59 men was 23:07, with the other medalists not far behind. They were posting lists on the wall as people finished with times and some breakdown information. The last one I saw was about to the middle 40 minutes mark and 22 guys had already finished in my 50-59 mens class. I will have to check back later to see where I actually placed. My best hope is at least be in the top 50% but that could be iffy.

After my post walk stretch and hydrating, I went back to the finish line to watch. They were already tearing down the barriers and breaking things down when the person I think was the last finisher crossed the line. She was probably over 60 and leaning on someone who may have been her son. She was smiling. I don’t know her story but bet that for her that was the equivalent of climbing Mt. Everest or something.

Too many sights to write about, like a 3 year old girl walking pulling her father along by his hand with an arrow on her T shirt pointing down below the caption, “Mommy’s kidney”.

I was feeling a lot of camaraderie, but the post race free meal was spaghetti with meat balls served in a hinged styrofoam container, and since I no longer live on muscle transplants I passed up that opportunity and drove the hour and a half home. After I took a nap it was off to the temple for the Sunday feast where I could bring my own reusable metal dishes and eat a nice vegetarian meal.

Tomorrow I am back to Pittsburgh for an 800 meter ( half mile) race that is sure to be embarrassing but my false ego is massive and can handle it so fools rush in…

 

Transplant Games This Coming Weekend!

Saturday I leave for Pittsburgh for the 2008 Transplant Games. I am not ready. The months have slipped by and all the conditioning I had wanted to do has mostly remained undone and I am weak with little stamina. Between bad weather and fatigue, my efforts have been way off the ideal.

I have recently managed to get my doctor to change my blood pressure medicine from one that slows the heart to one that dilutes the blood vessels and that has helped marginally. I always had good blood pressure but the anti rejection medicine has the side effect of raising it.

He also sent me to one of those stress tests where they hook electrodes on various parts of your chest then have you run on a treadmill. All the jagged lines that were printed out on the chart turned out good, and my heart returned to resting okay, but the blood pressure went up pretty fast and stayed up which is apparently why I get so winded so fast when pushing it. That is due to being out of shape, so one of those Catch-22s — hard to get in shape being winded but without being in shape will get winded easily.

Tulasi came with me to Pittsburgh weekend before last for the final Team Pittsburgh meeting. I got T shirts and other uniform stuff. I was saying to one runner (heart transplantee) how I didn’t know if I should run the 800 meter race because I will just be chugging around the course at such a slow pace. He said for one race at a previous Games a participant had done it with a walker, the kind with wheels on it. So I guess I will go ahead and embarrass myself by competing.

We were going to go try the 20 K bike race course again but after the meeting we went shopping in the Strip, the produce wholesale and great food retail area , and scouting event locations. When we were leaving for North park for the bike course, the car starting making strange nosies so we aborted the mission and went straight home. I didn’t feel like I had made enough progress to be able to do the second of the 2 laps that I was unable to do the first time, but figured it wouldn’t have hurt to try.

One change in the race is instead of a 1 3/4 mile ride before the 1 and 1/4 mile nonstop unrelenting hill, the race will now start at the bottom of the hill. This is good because if I am foolish enough to attempt the second lap, if I can’t make the hill the second time I can just turn around and coast back down to the starting line. From the old starting point I would have still had the longer backtrack remaining at the bottom with possibly nothing left in the tank to make it.

Here is my schedule:

Sat. 7/12/2008 - Registration and then Opening Ceremonies (6:30 PM)
Sun. 7/13/2008 - 5K Road Race for Organ & Tissue Donation (Transplant Athlete) (7:00 AM - 8:30 AM)
Mon. 7/14/2008 - Track & Field - 800 Meter Run (4:00 PM - 4:45 PM)
Tues. 7/15/2008 - Cycling - 20K (12:00 PM)

I will be staying with friends in Pittsburgh Saturday night, returning to New Vrindaban for the Ratha Yatra, then back to Pittsburgh Monday.

I have been running wheelbarrows of compost and mulch to trees and shrubs in a last ditch effort to get some improvement in stamina, but it may be too little too late — we’ll see.

 

Millennial Bike Trip Record Shattered!

First, a note from our sponsor: There will be a birthday party for Vidya at (new) Vidya and Shyam’s house Thursday June 12th at 5 pm. This is a changed to date due to a scheduling conflict.

Regular readers will remember my previous record setting long bike ride of the millennium , an inglorious 6 miles with multiple breaks, one spanning more than an hour.

Despite knowing that limitation, I signed up for a 20 K (12 mile) bike race for the 2008 Transplant Games being held in Pittsburgh, PA this year. FYI, it is not too late to sponsor me. While I had hoped to be in better shape by now, it hasn’t happened. I am still basically weak with no stamina, and conditioning hasn’t been going as well as I had hoped it would.

I only recently have started doing some laps at the temple. Tulasi rides my bike to the Palace for work. I drive up for lunch, grabbing my bike and leaving him the car. This means I get to the temple by coasting, instead of fighting steep hills to get there.

I measured that if you start at the “island” in the middle of the parking lot and go around the big lake, crossing the bridge between the lakes, and return to the start point, it is almost exactly 5/10 of a mile. Ergo two laps equal a mile (1.6 km).

I have done this a few times only, doing 6 laps, then 8 and then 4, over 5 days, meaning the farthest I had gone was 4 miles.

Saturday Tulasi and I went to Pittsburgh to check out the course in North Park. It is a 10 K lap, according to the organizers, but our odometer (corrected for known inaccuracy) showed it to be 6.35 miles which makes it over 10 K.

We drove it first as it goes around a lake and a golf course and makes several turns onto different roads and I didn’t want to get lost biking it.

It was 88 F (30 C) in Pittsburgh when i started out, which may not sound like much to tropical dwellers, but that is hot for a northern temperate zone boy, plus it was humid. I didn’t feel uncomfortable with the heat as there was a decent breeze, but it may have affected my performance. At least race day can’t be much worse, so it was good for that.

The course started up a slight hill and then down to a few hundred meters flat spot and that was the last I saw of any flatness. Then a long but not so steep part with a small dip, and then the Hill. It went on for one mile (1.6 k) continuously without a break. It wasn’t as steep as the hill from the temple to the Palace most of the way so I could handle the climb but it was the sheer duration of it that started to wear on me.

I was in tree shade until near the top where I broke out into the sunshine and for the last 300 meters it got significantly steeper. Next time I run the course I will shift into a lower gear well before this point so I am not spent when I reach it but this time I hit the wall and had to dismount. I walked it up about 100 meters and then collapsed under a tree. It took me about 10 minutes to catch my breath.

Tulasi had been leap frogging me by going ahead in the car, parking and then waiting for me to pass before going up to the next spot. I stopped for so long he came back to investigate and I was seriously considering bailing out on the whole idea — not only not finishing this lap but dropping out of the race altogether.

He couldn’t talk long as he had had to park 50 yards away next to a no parking sign and a cop pulled up behind him so he had to go. I knew much of the rest of the course was down hill and I was already at the half way mark so, breathing almost normally again, I set out, knowing I COULD bail out anytime.

I cranked the rest of the way to the top and was then rewarded with mostly down hill coasting for a while, with only short uphills. By the time I passed the 5 mile mark, the naturally produced adrenaline and endorphins were mixing quite nicely and I had a little rush of exhilaration that I could actually do this, make the 2 laps on race day if I was in a little better condition and managed the long hill part better, yea ha!

There was one more short hill before the final coast home. Unfortunately it was like the steep part of the long hill again and all the optimism drained out rapidly as the shortness of breath and fatigue slammed me so hard again I was almost surprised. I had to get off and walk about 70 meters before coasting home. Any thought of trying to go part way around the 2nd lap evaporated.

Still, It was official — 6.35 miles, breaking my old millennium record of 6 miles. Plus a glimmer of hope I could do two laps and thus the full 20 K though really it will be longer than that if they start and stop at the same place. It took me almost an hour but I did finish a lap.

Contributing to that hope was that after the lap I didn’t have to go lay down as I would have had to for the last several years normally. I was actually able to go to the second reason for the trip, Das’ birthday party, and remain upright for a few hours there. I have been accustomed to going to the point of exhaustion and then being finished for the day so bouncing back bodes well.

The next day I also wasn’t wiped out, and no muscle soreness at all, so it is stamina and not muscle tone that is the current limitation.

Speaking of Das, it was his 50th birthday party. Often thought of as fresh faced and eternally young, this was a milestone that brought the onrushing of time into sharp focus for many of us.

His brother Devananda was there so I got to vicariously enjoy the Vrindaban, India atmosphere through his story telling which was a nice end to a hot and physically challenging day.

 

Returning To The Same Place

From: Boomerang returns, even in space

“In an unprecedented experiment, a Japanese astronaut has thrown a boomerang in space and confirmed it flies back, much like on Earth.

“Astronaut Takao Doi “threw a boomerang and saw it come back” during his free time on March 18 at the International Space Station (ISS), a spokeswoman at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said.

“Mr Doi threw the boomerang after a request from compatriot Yasuhiro Togai, a world boomerang champion.

” ‘I was very surprised and moved to see that it flew the same way it does on Earth,’ the Mainichi Shimbun daily quoted the 53-year-old astronaut as telling his wife in a chat from space…”

What does this have to do with anything? Nothing, really, just a cool thing and a segue to return to yesterday’s topic. Of course, I could stretch it and say that the nature of the soul is that it has a tendency to return Home, Back To Godhead, unless acted upon by an outside force, just as a boomerang returns to the place it was thrown from (”no fall” of the jiva guys beware — if you dispute this I will ignore you).

” The Vedic wisdom guides us to understanding our relation with the Supreme Lord Sri Krsna and to acting accordingly in order to achieve the desired result of returning home, back to Godhead.”

SB 2.2.27

My returning to yesterday’s topic is less glorious.

The lap I skated brought back a lot of memories, as on the interior of the path are multiple soccer fields where I used to coach when my youngest boys were growing up. I coached for ten years, many of them on those very fields.

When Tulasi was playing high school soccer one year, the kids would go down there and run laps for conditioning. On some occasions, I would go with him and skate along. This was before the End Stage Liver Disease really dominated my life so I still had some juice.

Tulasi and another kid were the fastest and best conditioned athletes on the team so they would run ahead of everyone else. With the skates I was able to keep up with them and would play the role of  irritating personal trainer exhorting them on. Seems impossible to think of it today, but it actually happened.

I was at the Team Pittsburgh meeting on Saturday. There are 49 teams competing in the Transplant Games. One of the topics covered was fund raising. The games cost money themselves, but they are a fundraiser for the National Kidney Foundation. The proceeds are used to raise awareness about organ donation. Part of the games are events honoring living donors and the families of deceased donors.

I set up a fund raising page for the Games and if any of you are so moved, you can donate through that page. This is good thing in my opinion and benefits many people. Who knows, someday it could be you or one of your family or friends, so please consider donating.

Help me raise funds for raising awareness about organ donation by clicking here.

Meanwhile, the weather is warming so I better get to getting in shape.