Word: kidney
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...ALOYSIUS GONZAGA Patron Saint of AIDS Patients Laid up early in life with kidney disease, Aloysius counted it a blessing because it gave him more prayer time. At 17 he renounced his family's wealth and became a Jesuit, devoting the rest of his life to the care of plague sufferers...
Janina A. Longtine, a student and colleague of Cotran, said his specialties were experimental vascular biology and kidney pathology...
SURVIVORS An experimental bone-marrow transplant may help treat kidney cancer, a disease so virulent that once it spreads, it kills half its victims within a year. Stem cells--the primordial cells that give rise to new cell lines--are collected from bone marrow. Once transplanted, they generate a new immune system, one that's capable of fighting off the cancer. The technique has been tried on only 19 patients, all terminally ill, but the results are promising. Although 10 died, two from the treatment itself, the others saw their malignancy shrink or completely disappear...
Other patients also face difficult choices because hospices don't usually offer pricey procedures such as dialysis, radiation or chemotherapy--even when designed merely to palliate symptoms. George Thielman, a retired printer from Chicago, didn't want to stop life-prolonging dialysis after a cancerous kidney was removed and the other began to fail. "Ultimately, he died in a nursing home, a place none of us wanted him to be," his daughter Betsy says. "We were always operating in crisis mode...
This small reprieve, if it is that, has many around him a little confused. "People aren't sure what's going on," says Twilia. Bruce, who has left no detail to chance, isn't concerned. "I feel at ease. My kidney will shut down whenever it's ready." --By Wendy Cole...