Elvind Frost: Kidney Transplant Pioneer

Elvind Frost: Kidney Transplant Pioneer

EIVIND FROST: KIDNEY TRANSPLANT PIONEER

by Ed Bryant

Photo: portrait. Caption: Eivind and Aggie Frost

Way back in the bad old days, doctors didn't do kidney transplants into diabetics. For

whatever reason, before 1968, a diabetic facing kidney failure, end stage renal disease,

had only two options: hemodialysis, or death.

Of course that has changed, but the pioneers were a significant part of the learning

process. The earliest diabetics to receive kidney transplants contributed their experience

to what we know today. What is taken for granted today was a very big deal in the late

1960s and early 1970s.

Eivind Frost, of Great Falls, Montana, was diagnosed with diabetes in 1946, when he was

21 years old. For the next 25 years, everything was pretty normal, but that era ended when

the Mayo Clinic, checking him out for loss of energy, found he had a lot of protein in his

urine. He was told his kidneys were failing. The doctor told him he'd need a kidney

transplant in one or two years.

Returning home to Great Falls with this news, Eivind consulted his diabetes doctor, who

had heard of a reputable transplant center in Seattle, Washington. He suggested to Eivind

there was no need for an appointment, just to go, "knock on the door and tell them

you are there for a transplant!"

This sounded unwise to Eivind and his wife Aggie, so they found another diabetes

doctor, who spent three hours with them, and told Eivind "You don't look very good;

you need a transplant." He told the Frosts that the transplant center in Seattle

didn't accept diabetics.

The doctor suggested he go to Minneapolis for a transplant, as they, unlike many

transplant centers at the time, realized the "risk factor" for a diabetic facing

surgery was really not that much greater than for any other person. Eivind called, and, as

he already received medical care through the VA system, made an appointment at the

Transplant Unit of the Fort Snelling Veterans Hospital in Minneapolis.

The VA Hospital put him on hemodialysis. They kept him there for two months, but,

perhaps uncertain whether he was in good enough shape, delayed performing the surgery. Not

angry with them for delaying, Eivind points out: "The VA Hospital has been good to

me... They furnish all my medications."

Impatient at the delay, Aggie Frost and a friend went crosstown to the University of

Minnesota Hospital (now Fairview-University Medical Center) Transplant Clinic. Two weeks

later, the Transplant Clinic called Eivind in for an appointment.

It took the clinic five days to test him, declare him ready, and place him on the

waiting list for a cadaver kidney. Eivind was instructed to call in, about every hour, to

see if a kidney had arrived.

Eivind and Aggie went to visit her family in Wisconsin, and when they returned, the

doctor called them and said: "I have a kidney for you; are you coming over here, or

do you want me to bring it to you?"

They got him to the hospital around midnight that night, where he was told he was

number two in line. He was dialyzed right next to the man who was number one, and he heard

the doctors come and tell that man: "I'm sorry, but the kidney isn't a close enough

match."

Eivind moved up to number one. "It made me feel so good!" he explained.

The transplant went well. The next morning, new kidney in place, they wanted to dialyze

him again! Though he insisted "I already have a kidney," they said they

"were under orders to put him on dialysis."

"I argued with them about it!" Eivind reports. "I am sure there were

heel marks all the way to the dialysis room!"

But they got him hooked up, and then they got things straightened out. Eivind did not

have to dialyze. "Surely they had their orders crossed," he says.

"I did pretty well what they told me to do, and I got along well," Eivind

reports. "The first day, they had me walking the halls. I was holding a pillow

against my belly, and the IV connections were hooked up to me. I was supposed to be there

14 days, but they ran out of beds... They told me I could go home after 13 days."

Eivind received his transplant (from a ten-year old child, he was told) on April 24,

1973. He had been (except for the visit to his in-laws) in Minneapolis since December

1972, and he did not return to Great Falls until June of 1973.

"I can't remember the amounts of Imuran and Prednisone they put me on first, but

the levels kept going down," he relates. "Today I take 10mg of Prednisone and

100mg of Imuran, every day."

The Transplant Unit told me that if my new kidney lasted three months, they would

guarantee it to last five years!"

It has lasted twenty-five years! Eivind had his last blood sample a few months ago, and

his Creatinine (one critical measure of a kidney's effectiveness) was 1.1, in great shape.

Eivind Frost is indeed a pioneer. Not only for his 25 years with a transplant, and his

52 years with diabetes, but also because he received his treatments back when the doctors

did not know what we do now. Someone starting off today faces vastly better odds... but he

has prevailed.

Eivind and Aggie Frost have raised a family. Their sons, Rick (age 50) and Rod (age 46)

are doing well. Eivind finally lost his sight to diabetic retinopathy, in 1988, after 42

years. He hasn't experienced other major ramifications, but, he reports, he has been

getting somewhat more brittle.

"My sugars keep going up and down—it is really difficult to keep from having

reactions," he told me. "My hemoglobin A1c was 6.3 last test, but Aggie has had

to get out the Glucagon a few times."

So what should we learn from Eivind Frost's experience? Coming from a time when

diabetes care was primitive and transplantation almost nonexistent, he has endured, and

prospered. Things are easier today; care is better, and we know a great deal more about

all aspects of diabetes. The lesson: He did, so you can!

NOTE: To learn more, see the tidbit article titled "Transplant Information"

in our Resource Column.