Not even two weeks after a pancreas transplant, 46-year-old mother of three Jami Pond is running more errands in one day than most able-bodied people hope to squeeze into a week.
Between destinations ā her son's eye appointment, a department store to return a few things, a quick stop at the bank, a run by the post office to mail tax returns, over to a drugstore to fill a prescription ā the Oro Valley resident talks about the new organ she received at University Medical Center in the early hours of April 5.
It was the second pancreas transplant she's had and her third organ transplant overall. She's been coping with Type 1 diabetes since she was 10.
Type 1 diabetes is sort of a case of mistaken identity. Conventional wisdom suggests that a person builds up immunity to an as-yet-unidentified virus, one whose cells closely resemble islet cells in the pancreas.
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Islet cells are responsible for producing insulin, which helps the body absorb sugar from the bloodstream. The immune system ends up launching a never-ending attack on the islet cells, and soon the body no longer is absorbing blood sugar.
Pond's first transplant, a kidney donated by her mother, was in 1993, after diabetes ravaged her own kidneys. A few years later, she had a pancreas transplant. Her body rejected the organ after two years, though, and she was back to relying on injected insulin.
When she heard UMC was restarting its pancreas program after a four-year hiatus, she signed up in October to get on the list in the hope of halting the continued deterioration that comes with diabetes.
Then on April 4, while in the middle of remodeling her home, she got the call.
All she knows is that a 19-year-old man in Nevada died, and newly recruited UMC transplant surgeon Dr. Ernesto Molmenti made the trip north to bring back the pancreas.
Molmenti has a lot of hope that this procedure will work out, he said.
"Although she was a higher-risk candidate than a patient who had not had a transplant before, we thought we could help her," he said. "Pancreas transplantation has not been promoted enough."
Molmenti was recruited to UMC last summer from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He was brought here to lead a new transplant team, restarting UMC's pancreas and liver transplant programs and revitalizing the kidney transplant program, he said.
The hospital's previous abdominal transplant program shut down in 2002 amid widespread criticism about who was allowed onto the transplant lists and who was kicked off.
Molmenti has performed hundreds of kidney, liver and pancreas transplants at Johns Hopkins, at the University of Pittsburgh and at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas.
Receiving a new pancreas can prevent the progression of Type 1 diabetes and many times helps people live without needing insulin injections, he said.
"It provides them with a sense of well-being they cannot get by taking shots of insulin."
Pond's kidney-donor mom, Tommie Carter, 67, knows what Molmenti means.
"When someone has diabetes and you deal with it day-to-day, you don't realize you go on a little roller coaster every day," she said.
Diabetics and their families become accustomed to how the diabetics' moods and energies change throughout the day according to how they feel because of high or low blood sugar, Carter said.
"To have the pancreas transplant and have all that go away is just a miracle."
Despite living with diabetes for most of her life, Pond said she has never let it keep her from doing things others do.
She's earned a master's degree in child development and has traveled, too, she said.
Mostly, she keeps a positive attitude.
"I try never to think about what I don't have. I think about what I have. The cup is always more than half full ā it's never half empty."
