Subject:
My Life in Minnesota
From:
"Marion Namenwirth" <namenwir@umn.edu>
Date:
Wed, 31 Aug 2011 20:31:51 -0500
To:
"Jochen Meyer" <ernstmeyer@earthlink.net>

Dear Jochen, 
 
I spent a few more hours at the State Fair this afternoon, before high-tailing it back to campus to catch a 4pm lecture about recent developments in Pediatric Liver Transplantation......one of our Pediatric faculty members giving a talk to the Surgery Department.  The recent developments include efforts to wean some of the children who have received liver transplants, from the immunosuppressive drugs.  Sometimes this works long term, but it's a nerve-wracking procedure because the liver may be irreversibly rejected as a result or, even worse, slowly, persistently rejected.  The immunosuppressive drugs make the children susceptible to infection and have other deleterious side effects so it is desirable to get rid of them if possible, but the Pediatrician lecturing explained that she monitors these cases with repeated liver biopsies and when she sees minor signs of fibrosis and other danger signals, she worries whether she should immediately restart the anti-suppressives, or sit tight and wait for the next biopsy. 
 
Some infants with hereditary enzyme deficiency deseases, while waiting for a good liver to become available for transplant, are being enrolled in an experimental program in which a suspension of normal liver cells (that produce the missing enzyme) is introduced via injection through the portal vein, in the hope that some of these cells will seed themselves into the liver and produce enough of the missing enzyme to be therapeutic until a liver becomes available for transplantation.  This, too, requires the administration of immunosuppressive drugs.
 
As for the State Fair, today I watched a lumberjack competition.  Two lumberjacks faced off in contests for who could chop through a stump fastest, saw through a log fastest, throw an axe at a target most accurately, and climb a pole fastest (using a loop that goes around the pole and attaches to the climber's belt).  Two "lumberjanes" competed in running along floating logs, as well as doing fancy footwork on the same log and moving it in such a way as to make the other person fall into the water.
 
Each day of the Fair there's a parade, involving several High School bands, and even Police Bands including one consisting of policemen in kilts playing bagpipes. There are clowns, floats (bearing giant cows and bulls, and including one for Princess Kay of the Milky Way), stilt dancers, and a man who propels a 15-foot diameter double wheel with the two halves held together by transverse bars (like a ladder made circular by bringing the top and bottom together).  By striding from one bar to the next he propels the wheel forward while riding atop it.  He threatens to run into the crowds lining the parade route, then at the last minute, he walks backward over the bars instantly reversing the direction of his giant wheel. 
 
All this was mine, and an Orange Float too!    Marion