An African American organ was transplanted to an inventor from Krasnodar in the United States. The patient recovered, but darkened noticeably.
You will hardly surprise anyone with a kidney and heart transplant. Liver transplantation, however, remains a challenge. The liver is a voluminous organ, larger than the heart, and it is extremely difficult to "implant" it. In the case of our compatriot Semyon Gendler, everything ended well. He agreed to tell his unusual story to "Komsomolskaya Pravda".
Inventor of Caller ID
From his youth, the seeds were called the Krasnodar Kulibin. He constantly invented and implemented all sorts of technical things. As a student in 1976, he invented an automatic number identifier (Caller ID) for his home telephone. There was nothing of the kind in those years in the USSR. But the technical know-how almost ruined the entire future of the craftsman.
Semyon boasted of his invention in the company of his friends from Krasnodar. One of them snitched at the KGB: they say that technical literature was sent to a friend by a foreigner from the American embassy in Moscow. Gendler to this day with a shudder recalls how the Chekists came to his apartment at six in the morning …
“However, the committee members figured out that Senya is a real talent,” said Igor Atamanenko, a counterintelligence officer, a former KGB lieutenant colonel and Gendler's friend from school. - Some bright head managed to convince the leadership of the central apparatus of the KGB of the USSR that the guy could be useful. For a while, Semyon was even assigned to the 12th department of the KGB (wiretapping of telephones), and a whole team of techies took up his invention. It was about the colossal savings in manpower and resources. It was no longer necessary to listen 24 hours a day, for example, to telephones installed in the offices and apartments of American diplomats in Moscow. And fix the numbers and work selectively. Moreover, Gendler's apparatus was able to establish the telephone booth number, and even from which city the call came.
It was with his brains that Semyon achieved in life what he now has, - continues Igor Atamanenko. - He's a millionaire. But not a businessman or an oligarch who got rich on the privatization of the people's wealth, but a creator, a creator. He has a lot of secret technical developments.
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Semyon, they told me that you are an inventor? - I ask Gendler himself
- It was like that - he waves it off. - I am a graduate of the Moscow Aviation Institute, then worked as an engineer at a defense plant. During the perestroika years, when salaries were no longer paid, he opened his own company in Krasnodar for the production of color television sets, Onyx. Then he adjusted the production of office equipment and air conditioners.
About 15 years ago Gendler learned that he had the hepatitis C virus in his blood. And then I was not too scared.
“I don’t know where I got this disease from,” he shrugs. - I sin on our dentistry. Earlier in the dental office, instruments were not sterilized well, and this virus enters the body only through the blood. I felt fine at first. This disease is very insidious: a person does not feel pain, because the liver is destroyed, but it does not hurt. Healthy - it is like a sponge, absorbs and cleanses the blood. With hepatitis C, it loses its functions, turns from a soft sponge into a stone.
Gendler began to fight the disease. It is believed that it is unrealistic to completely recover from this virus, but it is possible to slow down the destructive process. In those years, he moved to New York: there he has business partners, there are also the luminaries of medicine, which he began to walk in search of a panacea.
“As the years passed, my analyzes became worse,” Gendler continues. - I began to feel unwell, constant fatigue …
Five years ago, doctors announced to Gendler a fatal diagnosis: liver cancer. They admitted that Semyon had only a few weeks left to live. The tumor grew rapidly. The liver, already "eaten away" by hepatitis C, refused to work.
“The doctors said that there is only one chance to survive - to replace the diseased liver with a new one,” Gendler recalls. - It had to be done urgently, until the tumor metastasized. It's good that I was diagnosed with oncology at the initial stage. I understood: I won't try - I'm not a tenant.
In Russia, Semyon did not undertake to operate: the risk is too great, and the donor organ would have to wait too long. One of the American clinics agreed. The operation cost the patient $ 500,000 (paid for by the company where Gendler bought medical insurance) and lasted nine hours.
- The rehabilitation was not easy. Both pain and emotionally excruciating, - Semyon admits. - I turned off all phones. The callers would be interested in my well-being, and it was hard for me to talk about it. Therefore I "disappeared". Communicated only with doctors.
It was only a few months later that I turned on the phones and returned to a fulfilling life and work. But this was not yet the final victory. The hepatitis C virus remained in the blood. The transplanted liver itself became infected.
The patient did not give up. I tried the newest medicine. And he was cured!
- I felt like a second wind opened, I don't feel age, - says Semyon. - As if I'm not 65! Perhaps because my new liver is only 38 years old.
An unexpected detail: earlier Gendler was always pale, but now his skin began … to change color.
- When we met Semyon in Moscow in winter, I noticed that he somehow darkened, - Igor Atamanenko shares his impressions. - And then Senya stunned me: it turns out that he had an African American liver transplanted. I have known Semyon since my school years. He was always pale-faced. And now he's swarthy!
- In no case! Firstly, the peculiarity of Semen's skin is that it does not tan at all. And he lives in New York, and not in a hot country. Secondly, doctors forbade him to go to the sun, so as not to provoke a new oncology. So he always hides in the shadows. And most importantly, doctors in the United States clearly told him that darkening of the skin could be directly related to an African American liver transplant. They say they observe patients with liver transplants, and there are cases when people after that became really black …
- The donor liver had to suit me in many ways, - explained Semyon Gendler. - By blood group, Rh factor, and so on. At first, I was offered a white man's liver transplant, but was warned that it was not completely healthy. And the liver of the black donor was clean. It was impossible to hesitate, and I made a choice in favor of the second option.
Aren't you afraid to end up becoming black yourself?
- I don't think about it at all. Maybe I'll continue to get dark. But somehow I don’t bother about this. It is important for me that the liver works well. Analyzes are normal. The state of health is excellent. I continue to monitor, monitor health, nutrition. I returned to my work, fly on business trips, full of new ideas. I live in two cities - Krasnodar and New York.
Semyon says that he has started a new stage in his life, he is even thinking of marrying again. The former wife left after learning about his illness.
- Of course, I had to go through a difficult path to complete recovery, - says our hero. “But all the suffering was worth it.
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“Darkening of the skin is hardly associated with the donor's liver,” says Sergei Gauthier, chief transplantologist of Russia, professor, doctor of medical sciences, head of the Federal Research Center for Transplantology and Artificial Organs. - At least we have no data on this score. But we also do not have dark-skinned donors, we have never observed patients with such cases. In principle, the liver has no effect on skin color. The skin may turn black due to other conditions.