Chiropractor, Back Pain, Sore Neck
Ski accident victim’s Orangevale family takes solace in his generous organ donations
Patty Polster plays a phone message her son Steve left her two weeks ago, weeping at the sound of his voice. Steve’s brother, Matt, is behind her.
Stephen Polster gave blood regularly. He registered as a bone marrow donor. And he had wanted to donate a kidney to his cousin but found that he wasn’t a match.
When the 21-year-old Orangevale resident was gravely injured in a skiing accident Thursday, and doctors pronounced him brain dead, it came as no surprise to his family that Steve had registered as an organ donor.
“Steve was always a giving person,” his brother Matt Polster, 28, said Monday. “Whatever he could do for others, he would.”
Now, doctors are preparing to recover organs from Polster, who remains in a Reno hospital on a ventilator, his family said.
His major organs – kidneys, lungs, liver, heart, pancreas and intestines – could save up to eight lives, said Tracy Bryan, spokeswoman for Golden State Donor Services, the organ recovery agency for the Sacramento region.
His tissues – including corneas, skin, bone and ligaments – could improve the lives of 50 others, she said.
Gathered at their Orangevale home, Polster’s grieving relatives said the knowledge that his tragic death would help so many others has given them comfort, as has their shared Christian faith.
Phil Polster, a FedEx employee, said his youngest child was home on spring break last week from the University of the Pacific, where he was a junior majoring in economics.
The father and son went skiing Wednesday at Donner Ski Ranch, enjoying good conditions and their time together.
The next day, Steve got up early to go skiing with a female friend. His mother, Patty Polster, said she made brownies for them and packed a lunch, then said goodbye before she left for work at the post office.
“Love you. Have fun,” she told her son.
That afternoon, Steve’s friend called her and said he had been in “a terrible accident” and was on a ventilator.
“I said, ‘Is he alive?’ ” Patty Polster recalled. “She paused and said, ‘I don’t know.’ “
Family members made their way to Renown Regional Medical Center in Reno, where doctors told them Steve’s injuries – a broken neck sustained in a fall on the slopes – had caused his brain to die.
The young man was on a ventilator, and his heart continued to beat, but he was gone, the doctors said.
His family gathered in his room. All night they sat by his bed, holding his hands, talking to him, praying and singing hymns that he liked.
“It looked like he was sleeping,” his sister, Sarah Polster, 27, said Monday.
Later, they said their final goodbyes and came home.
On Monday, in Orangevale, Polster’s siblings and parents waited for word that the process of removing his organs and distributing them to transplant recipients had begun.
They listened to a recent message Steve had left on his mother’s cell phone. She wept when she heard his voice.
Sitting on the living-room sofa, they remembered their son and brother as a sentimental and generous young man, who let the family pets sleep on his bed and loved playing disc golf with friends.
A graduate of Bella Vista High School in Fair Oaks, he was on the school’s Academic Decathlon team and won a National Merit Scholarship, they said.
The family attends Valley Springs Presbyterian Church, 2401 Olympus Drive, Roseville, where memorial services are scheduled for 3 p.m. Sunday.
They ask that in lieu of flowers, mourners donate blood or register as organ donors in Steve’s memory.
Bryan said those who want to register as organ donors can sign up through the DMV when they renew their driver’s licenses or visit www.donatelifecalifornia.org.
Steve Polster’s sister, Sarah, and father, Phil, talk about the young man’s life, and his fatal fall on a Sierra ski slope, at the family’s Orangevale home on Monday. Polster, 21, an economics student at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, was home on spring break.
Four lives saved in complicated kidney swap at UC Davis Medical Center
Shawn Klein recently received a new kidney – one of eight linked operations that gave kidneys to three others as well.
Alan Klein would have given anything to help his ailing younger brother. He tried to give a kidney. But despite their genetic bond, he wasn’t a suitable donor.
But when an altruistic stranger arrived at the UC Davis Medical Center with a kidney to give, it set in motion a chain of linked donations that would ultimately save the lives of four Northern California residents over two days, including that of Klein’s brother.
The eight operations – four pairs of surgeries to harvest a healthy donor’s kidney and then transplant it into a patient – occurred over a 36-hour period on Feb. 22-23 and involved more than 30 UC Davis hospital staffers.
Members of the hospital’s transplant team matched the donors and recipients by combing through a long list of patients waiting for kidney transplants. It was complicated work that involved using sophisticated computer algorithms and medical sleuthing to see who on the list could take part in the ambitious undertaking.
Klein’s kidney went to another patient. His brother received someone else’s kidney – he’s not sure whose at this point.
The medical center in Sacramento has coordinated such donor swaps before, but nothing as elaborate.
“It was really quite an undertaking to make this happen,” said Dr. Richard Perez, a surgeon and director of the medical center’s transplant program. “It’s a tour de force to have eight surgeries happen in 36 hours. They’re big operations.”
Similar domino transplants have been occurring more frequently across the country, some involving up to a dozen operations. In 2007, the New England Journal of Medicine reported on a chain of 10 kidney transplantations over eight months in five states – all triggered by a single altruistic donor.
Donor swapping would seem like common sense, but until now hasn’t been done very often. Its use has grown in recent years with the help of sophisticated matchmaking software, said Laurie Reece, executive director of the Ohio-based Alliance for Paired Donation.
“It’s very complicated (and) really difficult to facilitate,” Reece said. “It takes a computer to analyze a bunch of scenarios.”
In the past, those in need of a kidney mostly relied on family or friends. “When they were told, ‘Sorry, you’re the wrong blood type,’ that was the end of it,” Reece said. “Now there is an option.”
More than 80,000 Americans needed kidney transplants in 2008, but only a fifth generally find a donor. Every day, about 12 people die while on the waiting list, according to the alliance.
Shawn Klein, 53, a registered nurse for the state of California, was running out of options when his kidneys took a turn for the worse last summer. He had been battling renal disease for 20 years.
Without a transplant, the Sacramento man would have had to continue dialysis treatments three times a week, with each visit lasting more than three hours.
Doctors told him he needed a new kidney. That’s when his brother Alan stepped in to help – only to learn that he had a different blood type and therefore was incompatible.
Still, his willingness to donate his kidney meant his brother had a shot at getting a compatible one from someone else.
When a donor can’t give an organ to their intended recipient, such as a relative or friend, because of a mismatch in tissue or blood types, doctors scour the transplant registry for a compatible patient who also has a willing, but incompatible, donor.
“If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have gotten a kidney. I’d still be waiting on the list,” said the younger Klein.
For Alan Klein, 60, it started with the urge to help his younger brother.
“I realized that I wasn’t just helping my brother, but three other people,” he said.
The surgeries took months to coordinate. So many things could have gone wrong. One of the patients could have gotten sick, delaying – or even scuttling – the entire operation.
There was also the risk of one of the donors pulling out – a very rare occurrence, said Perez, the UC Davis transplant surgeon.
“There’s nothing new here scientifically. It’s the willingness of people to donate, this concept of donor swapping, to give a kidney to someone you don’t know in order to help your own loved one,” Perez said.
“So many people need kidney transplants, but the pool of potential donors does not meet the need,” he said. “Paired exchange has expanded the donor pool significantly and, in turn, is making many more transplants possible.”
None of the transplant recipients know the identities of their donors, hospital officials said. They will find out later this month when they all meet for the first time.
Shawn Klein recently received a new kidney – one of eight linked operations that gave kidneys to three others as well.
Sacramento mulls plan to cap medical pot dispensaries at 12
Ryan Landers of a medical marijuana advocacy group addresses a meeting Thursday about Sacramento officials’ plan to allow no more than 12 medical marijuana dispensaries in the city. “This proposal would kill myself and other patients in similar situations,” he said.
Sacramento officials Thursday night presented a plan to cap the number of marijuana dispensaries in the city at a dozen and impose strict requirements for their operations.
Faced with a packed room of pot shop owners and medical marijuana advocates, City Manager Gus Vina asked for measured input on “an emotional issue.”
But representatives for marijuana patients and many of the city’s 39 registered dispensaries threatened lawsuits. They charged the plan would shutter tax-producing businesses and deny care to hundreds of cannabis patients.
“This proposal would kill myself and other patients in similar situations,” complained Ryan Landers, a Sacramento senior adviser for the Compassionate Coalition, a medical marijuana advocacy group. “You’re going to close clubs where hundreds of patients get marijuana. This is a huge problem for the sick.”
Landers, whose neck was bandaged on both sides from pain shots he takes for shingles, told city officials he was one of the architects of the 1996 Proposition 215 medical marijuana law.
He said the city plan amounted to Sacramento turning its back on people who should be protected under Proposition 215.
But Vina said Sacramento is trying to accommodate patients and communities. “There are a handful of cities that are trying to do something. And we’re one of them,” Vina said.
Robert Shantz, a lawyer for a dispensary association, the Sacramento Alliance of Collectives, said the city is offering “prohibition masquerading as authorization.”
The plan includes a lottery to determine which pot shops could stay in business. It would require dispensaries to maintain security and would ban the hiring of workers with felony convictions.
It also would require pot shops to label their products with a disclaimer saying that the dispensary – not the city – assumes “risk of injury or harm” from any marijuana sold.
Sonny Kumar, co-founder of the El Camino Wellness Center, complained that the ordinance could force virtually every Sacramento pot shop to close.
He cited provisions that would restrict dispensaries to commercial and industrial zones and ban clubs within 300 feet of neighborhoods or 500 feet of churches, parks, schools, youth facilities or substance abuse centers.
“It would result in only three locations where clubs or dispensaries would be left in the total city,” Kumar said.
Michelle Heppner, a special project manager working on the dispensary issue, said Sacramento officials studied Oakland, a city with a slightly larger population.
Oakland passed an ordinance allowing only four dispensaries but is considering expanding to 14, Heppner said.
Oakland also passed the nation’s first special tax – on top of the state sales tax – for local medical marijuana sales. The Sacramento proposal doesn’t include a local taxing plan.
City Councilwoman Lauren Hammond, who chairs a committee that will review the proposed ordinance, said she is concerned about dispensaries clustering disproportionately in a few city areas, including midtown.
She said Sacramento needs to get control of the issue to avoid a scenario similar to Los Angeles, where officials grappled over an ordinance as hundreds of dispensaries kept opening.
“We don’t want to wind up like Los Angeles,” she said. “We don’t want to rush to do this, but we want to be timely.”
WHAT’S NEXT?
The Sacramento City Council’s Law and Legislation Committee is expected to work on the proposed dispensary ordinance in April and May. If approved by the City Council, the ordinance could go into effect in June or July.
Jason Sterling of Rio Linda stands at a sparsely attended rally at Cesar Chavez Plaza in support of medical marijuana prior to Thursday evening’s meeting across the street in City Hall. Sacramento has 39 registered medical marijuana dispensaries.
Sutter hospitals to invest in electronic health records system
Sutter Health said Monday it will push forward with converting to electronic health records at its hospitals after delaying the project to save money during the recession.
The health system expects to spend $400 million over the next five years to expand its digital medical system, with Sutter Medical Center going online in 2013, when expansion of its 28th Street campus is complete.
While the economy is still very unpredictable, the hospital system will go forward with the project, said Pat Fry, the chief executive officer for Sutter Health.
“There’s never going to be a great time, so let’s give the value to our patients as quick as we can,” Fry said.
“The EHR is a vital tool in our continuing commitment to provide high-quality, coordinated care and affordable services to our patients,” Fry said.
Electronic health records have been touted as a valuable tool in promoting patient safety and improving the quality of medical care. The federal government included about $36 billion in stimulus funds to help pay for health information systems, according to the California HealthCare Foundation.
There has been a strong push in recent years to get more hospitals equipped with electronic records, which allow doctors to have patient information at their fingertips. Such systems also give physicians simultaneous access to medical charts – regardless of where they’re located within Sutter’s health system.
Sutter already has electronic medical records in its physician centers, officials said, and had hoped to get most of its hospitals online. But the poor economy prompted Sutter to slow expansion.
Mercy San Juan has four sets of triplets – and a pair of twins, too
Angela Wheeler of Granite Bay looks at Zoey, one of three triplets born to Wheeler and her husband, Terry, on Monday at Mercy San Juan’s neonatal intensive care unit. Zoey and her brothers, Mason and Lucas, are doing well.
The 26 beds in the neonatal intensive care unit at Mercy San Juan Medical Center being filled is not unusual. But more than half the infants coming from just five families is rather remarkable.
For the first time since the Carmichael NICU was founded in 1989, there are four sets of triplets in the collection of rooms making up the haven for tiny or struggling babies. There also is a set of twins.
A few of the babies are propped up on phototherapy lights to treat their jaundice, some are hooked to breathing tubes and monitors. Others are simply small versions of healthy newborns.
“Babies are so resilient,” said nurse Lori Wolf as she tried to elicit a burp from 4-pound Semaj Davis, who was born Jan. 11, just shy of 29 weeks, along with a brother and sister.
“I don’t think most adults could get through what these babies do – although they can get sick really fast, they also get better fast,” Wolf said.
Multiple births are increasing with the rise of fertility treatments such as ovulation-inducing drugs, artificial insemination and in-vitro fertilization. Older mothers also are more likely to conceive multiples spontaneously than younger women.
Still, less than two of every 1,000 babies born in 2006 were part of a set of triplets, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That year, the most recent live birth figures available, there were 137,085 twins born; 6,118 triplets; 355 quadruplets; and 67 quintuplets and above.
Sarah Watson, 24, a dental assistant from Magalia, had been trying to get pregnant for about nine months when she learned she had polycystic ovary syndrome. She started taking an ovulation-inducing drug and was pregnant three months later.
When her doctor told her she was having triplets, she said, “I just started bawling – I was terrified. But then I thought, ‘If God thinks we can handle three, we’re going to have three.’ “
Angela Wheeler, 41, who does marketing for a bank and lives in Granite Bay, had been trying to get pregnant for nine months when she underwent fertility treatments.
The first thing to go when she learned she was having three babies was the car: Wheeler needed something to accommodate five car seats for her 6-year-old stepdaughter, 3-year-old daughter and the triplets. She and her husband, Terry, an attorney, got a minivan, picked names and stocked up on supplies.
On Monday, Mason, Lucas and Zoey came during a scheduled C-section in their 32nd week of gestation. While 37 to 40 weeks is considered a normal pregnancy, doctors aim for 36 weeks for twins and 32 weeks for triplets.
The three – who weighed between 2 pounds, 9 ounces, and 3 pounds, 9 ounces at birth – appear healthy.
“It’s a blessing,” Angela Wheeler said.
Babies stay in the NICU until they can eat, are gaining weight and have no breathing or heart rate problems.
Staff members sometimes put the multiples together in a bed to emulate the womb experience.
“I just think it’s fun to watch how they end up molding to each other, kissing each other, and sometimes yanking tubes from each other,” said nurse Teresa Madison.
Watson and her husband, Cory, a pharmacy technician, have been staying in Carmichael since the babies were born Feb. 7 at almost 31 weeks.
Luke has grown to 5 pounds and Hannah to 4 1/2. Taylor, at 3 pounds, 1 ounce, is fighting necrotizing entercolitis, an intestinal infection.
“I always thought we were meant for bigger things in life and I think this is it,” their father said. “It’s going to be challenging and a lot of work, but I think we’re up for it.”
Nearing her 1-month birthday, Alexia Casillas rests Friday in Mercy San Juan Medical Center’s neonatal intensive care unit. Multiple births, of which there have been a flurry recently at the Carmichael hospital, have increased thanks to fertility treatments.
