The Surgeon's Cut (2020) s01e03 Episode Script

1
So, I used to be…
Frightened of monsters.
We had this old room
under the stairs going to our basement.
It had a lot of cobwebs
and was kind of scary.
I pictured monsters under the bed.
You know, the kind of monsters
that if you put your leg out,
hanging over the bed for a period of time,
you would feel a nibble…
…and they might even pull you under.
I used to think about that
when I was a little girl,
kind of thinking about
what the world was like.
At some point, though,
I realized, or I had this epiphany,
that if I…
Became a monster,
if I became one of them,
then it wouldn't be so frightening to me.
You're pulling too hard now.
You're pulling for yourself.
Stop it.
Hold still.
Hold it away from yourself.
Hold it toward me,
and then see how that opens it up for you.
More gentle when you took that out.
The way you grabbed the needle
was not beautiful.
Yep.
Gentle, gentle.
This is kind of a tender place.
You want to go more medial,
more toward my suture line, right,
with your next one.
Did you pick up on that?
See if you can direct it toward
your suture line.
She's pretty harsh.
You better know what you're talking about.
You better know what you're doing.
And if you don't, you'll pay the price.
It's not perfect.
Is this end turned down?
Is the end turned down?
You know whether you've done
a good job or not.
There's no guessing with Nancy Ascher.
I may need
a deeper one than this.
I may need a deeper one than
You're not listening.
- A big one?
- A big one, yes. Can I have one?
"I need better from you."
That's the thing she often says,
which can feel incredibly frightening.
That's not helpful.
I need you to hold this shit up like that.
This stuff up.
I am very serious in the operating room.
I tell people it's fine to laugh and joke
span style= "style2" after the job is done.
After we're done
we can all enjoy ourselves.
We can relax,
but not while we're doing the job.
Hold that edge.
Up, barely.
Don't. You're pulling too hard.
Don't touch that. Don't
I don't need you to touch it.
And transplant…
A liver transplant
is like this incredible combination
of an intellectual pursuit
and a technical skill.
I'll take a clip next.
It's so beautiful. It's so difficult.
And, if you do it right,
it's incredibly fulfilling.
She has pioneered
so many aspects of surgery,
nationally and internationally.
She is one of the most talented
American surgeons ever.
A constant pursuit of absolute,
undeniable excellence.
span style= "style2" Nancy Ascher.
Surgeon leader, scholar,
researcher, and diplomat,
a spokesman for the ethics
of transplantation worldwide.
Her CV has over 400 peer-reviewed works,
and her contributions, awards,
and academic accolades
are too numerous to count.
span style="style2"She is a member
span style="style2"of the WHO task force
on organ donation and transplantation
to combat organ trafficking.
She's also the first woman in the world
to ever perform a liver transplant.
Good morning.
So, when I was young,
I wanted a job that would interest me,
not just, like, in one year
or five years or ten years.
I wanted a job that would keep me occupied
and interested and excited
about going to work, like,
for 20 years and 30 years,
and that's what I have.
The most wonderful thing
about transplanting,
what makes it such a challenge,
is that there is both the technical aspect
of doing a perfect,
or nearly perfect, operation.
But there's also the challenge of managing
the medical aspects of the patients.
We've waited for many years.
Yes, we have.
Now you are going to say goodbye
to your nasty liver.
If someone had told us
that we would be going through this now…
- We wouldn't have believed them, would we?
- No.
- But that's life.
- That is life.
You have to go through
what it throws at you…
And overcome it,
and that's what we're doing.
A live donor liver
means that a… individual,
who's usually a friend or a relative,
is willing to donate
and to undergo a major operation
where a portion
of their liver is taken out…
And sewn into a recipient.
Maria, she has fatty liver,
and she was starting
to have complications.
Her four daughters,
I think they saw her deteriorate
right in front of their eyes,
and they became really alarmed.
I know that at least two of the daughters
signed up right away.
Adriana had expressed interest
and stepped forward.
She's the youngest of the four girls,
and, at 22, she became the donor.
So, are we ready?
- Ready.
- Any questions?
No, no. I want
So, I am happy to meet your mom,
but I'm not responsible for your mother.
- Oh, okay.
- So, we have that separation
between the donor and the recipient,
and that's really, really,
really important.
- So, do span style= "style2" you have any questions?
- Do I have any questions?
- Yes. Do you feel ready?
- Um… I'm ready.
Okay. You remember
the bad things we talked about?
- The bad things that could happen?
- Um…
Not at the moment.
Okay, so, you know that the surgery
has some danger.
Right? We talked about that.
Do you recall what we talked about?
- That I could die?
- Right.
You could have an infection.
It's possible we'd have to go back
to surgery.
It's possible you'll develop
a hernia in the wound
where we take the liver out.
Those are very unlikely,
but it's something
that you have to be ready for,
be aware of,
and still give permission to do it.
- Yes, I still want to do it.
- My baby.
I'm worried about my daughter
because she's giving me
a piece of her liver.
I worry that she's risking
her life for me.
Yes,
it's an incredible thing she's doing.
Yeah.
Okay, so are we set for tomorrow?
Are you good? Are you going to cry?
- Maybe.
- All right. Me, too.
Yeah.
- We're ready.
- All right.
- Nice to see you.
- Nice to see you.
Yeah, I'll see you tomorrow morning.
Nice to meet you.
Nice to see you again. Yeah.
- She's cool, huh?
- Yeah.
What did you think of her?
She's direct. Yeah, she is direct.
- That's good, though.
- It's good.
Yeah.
When they diagnosed my illness…
During those months,
two of my granddaughters
were going to be born.
And I felt so ill,
I didn't think I was going to meet them.
My daughters are my treasures.
For them, I held on to life…
After I was told
that nothing could be done for me.
Yes, we finally arrived at this moment.
With God's help,
everything is going to work out.
Right now, I'm just a little frightened
for my daughter.
My mother used to say
that your family is like the key.
You know, those relationships are
the most important in your whole life.
I grew up in Detroit, Michigan.
Motor City.
It was a kind of traditional household.
I was the third of four children.
Not the oldest, not the youngest,
not the only boy.
So, I think there was
a little bit less expectation of me,
but I was competitive from childhood.
I, you know…
I wanted to be number one.
My mom was a teacher
and my dad was a doctor.
My parents both
were very committed to education.
At the dinner table,
we had a game called the "Shut Up Quiz."
My father would go around the table.
You could pick any topic you wanted
and he'd ask you a question.
And if you answered your question
correctly,
you could continue to talk,
but if you answered your question
incorrectly,
you had to shut up
until everybody went around the table
and was done.
So, the trick in the game
was not just to know your subject,
but also to pick an esoteric subject
that perhaps my father didn't know.
My mother would pick subjects like sex,
uh, and he would become a little bit…
He didn't know what to ask her.
So she frequently
kind of got her questions right.
We were told as children
that we could do anything we wanted.
We could achieve anything we wanted,
but we had to do service.
We could not do business.
We had to help other people.
For a while,
I thought perhaps I should be a nun.
But my family was Jewish,
so that wasn't going to work out well.
But I think the reason I wanted to do that
is I saw it as a way
of being devoted to something.
- Good morning.
- Good morning.
My name's Robin, one of the nurses here.
We're gonna check you in
and we'll get this done.
There's always a very small chance
of a serious complication,
such as a change in the blood pressure,
a change in the heart rate,
or other serious things
like heart attack, stroke.
Most of those things,
we can see if they're happening
and we can intervene right away,
which are what our monitors are for.
But there's always unforeseen risks
that we just can't predict,
and that would be including death.
But that is astoundingly rare.
When you operate on a healthy person,
the stakes are different.
Because you're taking a healthy person
and potentially risking their lives
when you do a live donor operation.
So I find it to be
a very big responsibility.
Okay, you just roll towards me.
Perfect. You're doing great.
There's a pillow that's gonna go
under your knees in a second.
Then you're gonna come
a little bit more towards me.
Then we're going to give you
some oxygen to breathe here, okay?
The live donor operation
is a four, or six,
or eight-hour operation
where patience is the name of the game.
Just nice deep breaths, in and out, okay?
You just have to go slow enough
so that you don't make any mistakes.
Antibiotics?
- Cefazolin, two grams.
- Great.
Cholecystectomy.
Incision.
Thank you.
The very first time
I went to an operating theater
was in medical school,
and I watched an operation
and I felt sick to my stomach.
I have a problem,
I think I still have a problem,
with seeing people in pain.
I tell the medical students
when they first come in
and don't feel so great
when they see surgery
that it happens to a lot of us,
and it doesn't mean you can't do it.
It just means you got to get used to it.
You got to see the monster
on the screen, right?
span style="style2"The human body
span style="style2"is not a jigsaw puzzle to experiment on.
span style="style2"You're playing it safe
span style="style2"like the other doctors.
Might as well save my breath.
Keep massaging the heart.
You've already lost your patient, doctor.
I'm going to save mine.
span style="style2"His pulse is coming back,
span style="style2"stronger than ever.
It's unbelievable.
span style="style2"Nothing is unbelievable
span style="style2"if you have the nerve to experiment.
Every Saturday,
my mother would take
all four of us kids on the bus
to the movies.
span style= "style2" There's more to surgery
than just being
a carpenter to patch up walls.
Our bodies are capable of adjusting
in ways we've hardly dreamt of.
If we can only find the key.
My mother's taste in films
was really weird.
The movies weren't just any movie.
It was always a horror filmspan style= "style2" .
span style="style2"With my new special compound
span style="style2"I've created, I'll do it.
- I know I can do it.
- span style= "style1" -That's what you think.
In the early days of transplant,
in the 1950s…
There was incredible public distrust
and worry about transplantation.
And many people thought
transplant surgeons
were doing an unnatural act.
You must be stopped.
Even in the case
of the live kidney donors,
the Herrick twins,
Joseph Murray, who was the surgeon
who won the Nobel Prize,
and led the surgical team
in that operation…
He was attacked by the public
as being a Dr. Frankenstein.
It's alive! It's alive!
It's alive!
In the name of God,
now I know what it feels like to be God!
You know, the fathers of transplant,
Starzl, Bismuth, Pichlmayr,
those are the people
who really started the field
of liver transplantation.
I mean, in the old days,
people did liver transplants,
but the success was horrible.
When we first started out,
it was 20% one-year survival.
We are the generation of people
that made transplantation,
liver transplantation, a clinical reality.
I'm going to get her checked in.
She's going to have her liver transplant
with the right side
of her daughter's liver today.
Maria's disease is NASH,
"nonalcoholic steatohepatitis."
And then to do that,
we cut the blood vessels
and the bile duct that hold it in place.
With the epidemic of obesity,
NASH is becoming more and more frequent
and people think that
it will be the most common cause
for transplant in another ten years.
There's simply too many people
who need organs,
and not enough organs to go around.
So, that's a giant problem.
You know, that's why we need live donors.
A retractor from under…
No, I'm doing it.
Now, we only have one liver,
but what was found
was that you could
actually divide the liver
according to the blood vessels
into different segments.
So you can take two-thirds of the liver…
And give it to somebody who needs it.
The liver is the biggest organ
in the body.
It also has maybe 400 different functions.
It's this wonderful organ
that is really complicated,
has lots to do.
You know, many of us think
it is the center of the body
Unlike the heart and unlike the brain,
it is the place where
Everything gets done in the liver.
I mean, is it true?
Yes, it's true.
That is where your soul is.
You know Prometheus, who was a Titan.
He was half-man, half-god,
and he stole fire from God
to give it to man.
A wonderful advance for man.
And he was punished by Zeus…
By being tied to a rock
and having his liver pecked out
by an eagle or a vulture…
…and then overnight,
the liver growing back.
It's so interesting because, in fact,
that's what the liver does.
It grows back.
The interesting thing about the liver,
once we do it,
is if, for example,
we take out the right lobe…
What she has remaining
is this piece of left lobe.
And what happens over time
is that this left lobe…
Grows that way.
And what's sitting right next to the liver
at that point is the stomach.
So the patients feel what we call
"early satiety."
If they eat something,
they feel it pretty…
They feel full pretty quickly.
It takes them a while to get used to this
different anatomy that they have,
but it's fine
from a functional standpoint.
As we're starting to divide
the liver tissue…
We call into the recipient room
to start the recipient.
We would like to have those two things
happening at the same time,
so that we don't have a long time
where the liver sits outside the body.
This is what you guys didn't do
the other day.
- Yes.
- That's what you got to do.
Hot Bovie.
I was taught to have fear and respect
for the liver
because it's so vascular.
At the time of autopsy,
these livers were removed
and plastic was infused
into the different structures,
and you can see
how long the blood vessels are here.
So if we were to take the right lobe
of this donor,
we would go through these tissues
right here.
I would have to cut across
all these different teeny blood vessels
and bile ducts
to successfully divide
the right lobe from the left lobe.
It gives you an idea of how complicated
it is, the liver anatomy,
and why it is such a meticulous operation.
Yeah, it's very cool.
The liver is the best.
For me…
The tension is during the dividing
of the liver tissue…
Because that's the time
where you can get into bleeding
and where the few other unlucky surgeons
who have had
very bad complications and deaths
that's when that's occurred for them.
So I'm always cognizant
of that past history of others
when I go through the liver tissue.
And I need a hot Bovie.
I need a hot Bovie.
We have to tie off or clip
all the little teeny arteries
and veins and bile ducts
that go from one side to the other…
So that the donor doesn't have a leak
and the recipient
doesn't have any problems after surgery.
Up, up. Lift up the whole way.
Thank you.
- That doesn't work, does it?
- No.
It's like dancing on the edge…
Because if you make a mistake,
it's really costly for the patient.
It's the monster under the stairs.
You know, the liver sits
right on top of the vena cava,
which is the main big vein in your body,
and if you get into that vena cava,
you can bleed to death very easily.
So, I think that you have to have
fearlessness, tempered by fear of failure.
You have to take that life in your hand,
but you've got to recognize
that that is…
It could be gone.
So, it can't just be fearlessness.
It has to be fearlessness,
kind of married with
the incredible responsibility and respect
that you have for that human being,
that you have to have for that person
who is so vulnerable
at that moment in time.
It is mastery.
It is doing something nearly perfectly.
I don't play the piano.
But if I played the piano,
I would want to do it perfectly.
I don't play the violin.
But if I did it,
I would want to do it perfectly.
That's what surgery is about.
To me, it's like a symphony.
It's very beautiful.
I've never seen someone who is
technically as gifted as Dr. Ascher.
When you see a virtuoso perform,
you just know it.
Playing the piano, or the electric guitar,
or doing surgery.
You can see that there is
economy in motion, that it's natural.
There's no struggle.
It looks like they've been born with it
in their hands.
Her sense of time is amazing.
She's so skilled
and she can do everything so fast.
It's like watching art.
- Can you move that a little bit?
- Yeah.
I try to kind of grade
whether or not I did a perfect job.
Whether I made mistakes,
what my mistakes were during a case.
But you always remember
the mistakes you make.
It… it's really very interesting to me.
I mean,
I guess it's the surgeon psychology,
where you remember when you make an error.
When I was exposed to surgery,
it seemed to be
what really made sense for me.
I wanted to do things that frightened me…
Because then I had mastery over them.
I was dealing with my fears
in the way that I do it.
I go for it.
I viewed surgery,
and particularly transplant surgery,
as a way to take chronic diseases
and solve them and reverse them,
and that was, and is,
really appealing to me.
I mean,
it still is the appeal of surgery to me.
For those of us who are not interested
in delayed gratification…
Surgery is the best.
When I applied to medical school,
it was relatively rare for women to go.
In my medical school class
there were 20 women out of 220.
And of the 20 women,
I think maybe two of us went into surgery.
So, when I applied for medical school,
I was asked
to have an additional interview
with a psychiatrist.
As were some of the other women
who were applying.
And he asked me
really inappropriate questions.
"Do you think you can be satisfied
with one partner?"
You know, stuff like that
that was really not appropriate.
We had a professor of OBGYN
who showed us pictures of naked women
as part of his lecture,
and of course the 20 women stood up
and walked out of the classroom
when that happened.
We were proud
and we felt that we were making it,
that we were, you know,
part of that women's movement
in the most meaningful way.
They had scrub dresses and scrub suits.
You know, tops and pants.
Of course,
I never wore the scrub dresses.
I always wore the scrub suits.
And instead of having the top,
which is cut low in the front,
I used to turn it backwards
so that people would take me seriously.
I really wanted them to know
that I was a serious person.
It was a very heady time.
Women are demanding the right
for equal jobs,
equal education opportunities,
free childcare,
and free abortion on demand.
These demands are universal
because women's oppression is universal.
And that's when I resented my father
a little bit.
I told my mother, you know,
she shouldn't necessarily listen to him.
You know, what did he know, that man?
It helped me. It fueled me.
I became chair of the department in 1999.
I wanted to have an opportunity
to leave my own imprint.
I was interested in developing
the careers of women…
Particularly young women
who were not given an opportunity before.
She has taught me
just how not to lose track
of whatever version of being a woman
I want to be,
even while I'm being a surgeon…
And to bring that into surgery,
not try to conform
in ways that aren't necessary.
I had this dream last night
that she got infected
because I re-closed an infected space.
So, I called her
to find out how she was doing.
She said, "Dr. Ascher,
I'm so happy to talk with you!"
I'm actually glad to hear that,
because I want to call my patients
and follow up,
- but I'm not sure if it's like lurking.
- No, it's not lurking.
Okay.
Right on the cava,
right underneath. Don't make a big…
You're operating with only one hand.
That's gonna be way too big.
- Okay.
- Come on.
So, with your other hand
pull this down like that,
so that you just skive the cava.
I don't need you
to give me a biopsy, here.
Go ahead. Skive underneath…
She's honestly changed my life.
She told me the story
about the Flying Wallendas,
who are a tightrope walking troupe.
This entire family who spent
their lives walking on the tightrope.
And they do it without a net often,
so some of them have died.
The founder of their troupe
has this quote that basically says,
"Life is on the wire.
The rest is just waiting."
And so she said that to me
in the context of saying,
"You'll know that you found your calling
or your profession…"
When it feels like, when you're doing it,
life is on the wire.
And when you're not,
everything else is just waiting."
All right. One, two, three.
No, you've gotta see…
Yeah, start at the top.
That's it, that's just… Fine, fine, fine.
Like that. Perfect.
Now pick up for yourself. Good.
Sometimes they tell me
that I am in their heads…
For years and years and years
after they've been with me.
I try to figure out
what each of their needs are.
Like, you know, I'm pretty demanding,
but I'm not totally demanding
if someone falls apart in front of me.
You know, I do have my limits.
The little one.
You know this little branch
that kind of follows this?
That's a branch from the middle vein.
It's a branch
that's going into the middle vein.
You could say it like that.
When the liver's
almost completely divided,
Dr. Roberts comes in the room.
His job is to see what he's got
so that he can successfully re-implant it
in the recipient next door.
All right, do you wanna see? Come on in.
I think I'm good, John.
Okay. I mean, this is withholding it.
All right. Right angle.
I'm happy to take more
if that's what you're asking me to do.
Your partner in surgery
is somebody you really need to trust.
I think you can use it
just as well, right?
I don't have a lot of space,
your hand's there. Okay, so, now…
I have incredible respect
and admiration for his abilities.
He has more patience than me.
Um…
Uh, well, I was his teacher. How's that?
Uh, I taught him most of what I know.
I was a young faculty and he was a fellow.
Seriously, he was in training
and I was his teacher.
I think I became attracted to him
because he was a good surgeon.
I can't see.
I'm glad you can see.
I can't see anything you're doing.
People ask me, "How can you work
with your husband?"
But in fact it makes perfect sense to me
because he's somebody who I know
will do the job that I expect done.
You know how demanding I am.
So it's kind of easy
to have him be a partner.
I get impatient with him
in the OR, though.
- What?
- It's this. It's right here.
- Next to your knot.
- Thank you, John.
Nancy has what people call
"a command presence."
You know, it's sort of a military term.
I was warned not to talk about her.
We don't have to have
lots of communication.
"Do this, do that."
He knows.
We sort of separate
our married life from our business life.
But, you know, I think she's impatient
in all aspects of life.
You know, I like things done
a certain way,
just my own little way.
We have two children,
a beautiful daughter and a beautiful son.
My two delivery days, I was operating.
With Becky, I was in the operating room
and I felt fluid on the floor.
I felt this fluid everywhere
and I asked the anesthesiologist
whether he had a leaking IV.
The people in the room informed me
that in fact I had ruptured my membrane
so I was probably in labor.
I hurried to finish the operation
and then went to the hospital
to have Becky.
I was also operating the day
that Johnny was born.
For him, I was really in labor,
and by the time we got to the hospital,
I delivered about 15 minutes later.
So I think they call it "precipitous."
Did you take a lot of time off afterwards,
or you went back to work?
I took about a week off with Becky
and about three days off with Johnny.
When somebody's ill
in your family,
the whole family dynamic is disrupted.
If you want to bring things in order…
…live donation is one way
to do that pretty quickly.
They said
everything is going well so far.
That's it.
We got a text message
to say that all is going well.
It's going well.
That's good.
It's a complicated thing
when somebody in your family is sick.
Ten years ago, my older sister Sheila
developed chronic kidney disease.
She had bone pain
and took anti-inflammatories
to help her pain,
and the anti-inflammatories
damaged her kidneys.
She wasn't yet on dialysis,
but it was clear she was headed
toward dialysis.
So we had to figure out
what to do for her.
My brother, he wanted to be the donor.
But during his work-up
he was found to have prostate cancer.
So he was eliminated.
My younger sister
who also stepped forward, or was willing,
was ABO-incompatible with my sister.
And then that left me
as the next one in line.
I made the decision to do it
on the spur of the moment.
And that's why I say
that I think it's an emotional decision
rather than an intellectual
or rational decision.
I wasn't really paying attention
to the literature
or to the warnings that they gave me.
I decided
that I really wanted to help my sister.
To be in the patient's shoes, to be…
To be a patient.
Because I had always kind of had
this little separation
between the doctors, us,
and them, the patients,
and suddenly I was a "them,"
instead of an "us."
And that was really an interesting,
kind of liberating, but remarkable,
kind of revelation that I was
no longer the person in charge,
but I was the patient.
So it kind of gave me
a renewed appreciation
for what patients have to go through.
I felt like we had beaten the odds,
that we had kind of figured it out
and done it.
I felt great about it.
About three years after the donation,
however,
Sheila died at home, by herself.
That was a giant thing.
I was undone by the news.
I had to leave work. I couldn't…
I needed to compose myself.
You know, they say that the people who…
Have good relationships
don't feel guilty when somebody dies.
But, I mean,
Sheila and I had come to terms,
we were… We really had…
I was surprised at how much it got to me.
For You know, for some years,
I couldn't talk about it.
I feel like
it was the right thing for our family.
It was the right thing for her,
the right thing for me.
People have to decide for themselves
whether it's the right thing for them.
But I don't try to push people to do that.
I don't think that's right.
Did I kind of second-guess myself
whether I made a good decision,
whether it was a good use of my organ?
Uh, I can't look backwards.
I've got to look forward.
Dr. Roberts takes the liver out…
And he goes to the back table
and prepares it…
And he weighs it, he flushes it of blood…
And then prepares the vessel
so that he can successfully re-implant it.
I don't care if you tie above or below.
Squirter, please.
Scissors.
Six hundred, Nancy.
Yeah, just like you're
Yeah, there you go. Nice.
Very nice.
All right.
Where's Maria? There she goes.
I'm also tense because I want
the closure to be beautiful.
You know, these donors,
they don't know
that we've toiled for many hours.
All they know is what they see
on their abdomen when they look down,
and we want it to look nice for them
because they've done
such a wonderful thing.
No, just hold it like that.
There you go.
Tie that.
When you put that new liver in
or that new kidney in…
That's incredible.
And you, again, are humbled…
By the enormity, the kind of wonder,
the miracle of what we're doing.
It's really humbling.
Hi. I'm Dr. Ascher.
So, we're all done for surgery
with the donor.
Adriana's all done.
They're just closing her skin right now.
Everything went fine.
She lost very little blood.
She gave a nice big piece of liver
to her mom,
and they're working on her mom right now.
So, Adriana is going
from the operating room
up to 13 ICU directly.
She should be there perhaps in 40 minutes,
then it takes the nurses an hour
to get her settled
and you can see her after that.
Um, these next 24 hours are important
in terms of bleeding
or other complications that can happen,
but I'm not expecting that.
But you just have to know
about that, okay?
Everything went fine.
I'm very pleased with how things went.
Okay?
And Dr. Roberts has a really nice
piece of liver to work with.
Okay? All right.
- Thank you.
- You're welcome.
Thank you. So, everything's good?
People have a fantasy
that surgeons are aloof…
And are disconnected from their patients.
And I actually am
of the absolute opposite opinion.
I'm fine. I'm done.
Okay.
I feel like
there is this incredible intimacy
when you are inside someone else,
when you are touching someone else.
When you are bringing them back to life…
I think there's nothing more intimate.
Do surgeons sometimes
have to steel themselves
to the pain and suffering
of their patients?
I think sometimes
they have to protect themselves.
But every single surgeon
will tell you about the times
they've cried over their patients.
They have.
The first thing I remember is
my family waiting there…
And I was waving at them
and I gave them a thumbs-up…
And they were right there.
I'm excited to see how Mom is going to be
after this.
My liver, inside of my mom.
You see? It's kinda hard to see.
It's just like a big blob right there.
All of this.
It's crazy how that was inside of me
and now it's inside of my mom.
And how's the eating going?
- So-so.
- Okay.
And how does it feel
to have part of your daughter in you?
She gave me the opportunity…
- To live a few more years.
- It's difficult.
So, tell her
when she doesn't feel like walking,
or she doesn't feel like doing something,
she can think about that.
It'll give her strength.
- Okay.
- Okay. Bye-bye.
- Thank you.
- Yeah.
- Thank you so much.
- Thank you so much.
Maria was lucky
to get the live donor operation.
In the US, only 4% of the transplants
are done using live donors.
There are very few countries in the world
that actually have enough donors
to meet the needs of the population.
And what that does is
it creates a market for organs.
span style="style2"Undocumented migrants
span style="style2"are an easy target for organ traffickers.
span style="style2"Criminal gangs
span style="style2"can easily trick or pressure people
into selling their organs.
span style="style2" Organ trafficking
span style="style2"is increasingly going hand-in-hand
with human trafficking.
There's tons
that needs to be done.
You need both a live donor program
and a deceased donor program
to really meet the needs
of most populations.
Most countries have something
that's not perfect…
And they need help.
And I don't mean that
in a "colonial" help.
They just need examples.
They need to see
how other people are organized
so they can do it themselves.
And now it is my pleasure
and great honor
to introduce Dr. Nancy Ascher.
She is an organ transplant surgeon
and the chair of the department…
I've been lucky to be able
to work with different governments
who are interested
in combating that activity.
My job today is to give you some context
about organ trafficking.
I know that you spend a lot of time
thinking about people trafficking,
but this is a little bit different.
It's a much smaller piece of the pie,
but a really important piece of the pie.
Why do you want to take on the world?
Well, I'm not certain every day
that I want to take on the world.
But those days
when I'm feeling powerful…
You know, if you've got some knowledge
and you've got some expertise,
it's very wonderful to help people
in other places,
to help colleagues think about things
as you've thought about stuff.
And now to rest at home
after how many days?
- Like, 12.
- Twelve days in hospital.
I'm happy
because we've lived to tell the tale.
It's been hard on all of us.
Hard on my daughters,
and especially you.
You gave me another chance.
- I love you.
- I love you, too.
You know, it's our job
to hold our hand to the next generation.
It's really important for young people
to see what is possible.
Would you like one of my flowers?
What theyspan style= "style2" could do,
if somebody let them dream.
Said there were no… no limits.
Okay, are we done
with the master interview?
Thank God.
I'm just kidding.