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.