Type 1 diabetes kept Matthew Martinez tethered to a kidney dialysis machine for 11 hours a day and dependent on daily insulin injections to keep him alive.
All that ended April 29 when Martinez, 31, received an unusual double transplant that gave him a new kidney and pancreas, curing him of the disease that had dominated his life since childhood.
Diabetes “affects everything from nerves to eyesight — everything,” Martinez said Friday in a patient room at Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque, where he received the double transplant 10 days earlier.
Dr. Gregory Larrieux, the state’s only pancreas transplant surgeon, said Friday he expected to discharge Martinez by the weekend.
“I haven’t had to take an insulin shot since Monday night last week,” Martinez said. Best of all, he no longer requires kidney dialysis.
Martinez’s surgery marks the first time that a simultaneous pancreas-kidney transplant was performed in New Mexico using organs from an out-of-state donor, Larrieux said.
Read the full article in the Albuquerque Journal.
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