Transplant Patient and Baby Doing Fine
Vickie Vann survived a dangerous medical situation when she underwent a liver transplant in 1985. Then she helped make medical history March 29 when she became one of only a few liver-transplant recipients in the world to give birth to a baby.
“She’s probably the second or third person in the world to give birth after a liver transplant,” said Dr. Ronald Busuttil, director of the liver-transplant program at the UCLA school of medicine.
Busuttil said Vann’s son, Jamie, was born without problems despite the risk of high blood pressure, which is common in pregnancy and among liver-transplant patients who take the drug cyclosporine. The boy arrived at full term, although most babies of transplant patients arrive weeks early for unknown reasons, Busuttil said.
On Wednesday, Vann brought her son to a reunion to honor liver-transplant patients at UCLA, which has the nation’s second most active liver-transplant program, behind the University of Pittsburgh. Busuttil said the school has performed 130 transplants during the last three years with a 75% survival rate.
Vann, 26, of West Covina suffered from hepatitis, cirrhosis and edema before her transplant but feels fine now. “I feel great. I haven’t had any problems since my operation,” she said.
Automotive Dean Keeps on Truckin’
As a girl, Mary Taylor never thought that working on her father’s fleet of trucks on a sizable Tennessee farm would lead to a profession.
But today she is glad she learned what she did. As the head of the South Bay College Automotive Training Center in Lawndale, Taylor believes she is the only female automotive-school dean in the nation.
“I’m not going to say I can overhaul an engine,” she said, “but if you want to know how your pistons work or how your valves need to be seated, I can help.”
Taylor said speaking the mechanic’s language makes her more efficient.
“I write curriculum for automotive programs for 200 students, and I have to keep standards of instruction so we remain accredited,” she said. “I also talk with car manufacturers, and you have to be able to communicate intelligently.”
Taylor, who holds a master’s degree in adult education, reinforced her early knowledge of mechanics with several adult courses. But she acknowledges the importance of what she learned early.
“There was a great respect that you did what your parents told you,” said the dean, who is in her early 40s. “My father used to tell us to learn everything we could because you never knew when it would help.”
The Right Chemistry at Cal State L. A.
It’s becoming the norm for chemistry professors at California State University, Los Angeles, to win the university’s prestigious Outstanding Professor Award.
Dr. Hendrick Keyzer is the latest to earn the prize, awarded annually to only two faculty members among 20,000 at 19 campuses in the state university system. Three other chemistry professors have previously won the honor.
The Indonesian-born Keyzer received a $1,000 prize. This quarter he is teaching an undergraduate course, “Maladies and Molecules,” which deals with the molecular basis of disease.
An artist in addition to his work in bioelectrochemistry and organic semiconductors, he is currently restoring a mural painted before World War II on a wall of the San Gabriel Mission.
But his primary interest is teaching.
“If I can impart an enthusiasm for learning and creativity and perhaps open-mindedness and develop in them (students) an appreciation for new ideas and certainly a tolerance for different ideas, then I think I’ve achieved my object,” he said.
Fresno Will Tip Its Wings to Pair
Fresno attorney Judy Lund-Bell calls her 19,000-mile flight from Paris to Bejing and back “the best month in my whole life.”
On Sunday she and her co-pilot husband, Jim, will re-enter the single-engined Cessna that they flew on the Arc-en-ciel (rainbow) air race and fly into the Fresno airport, where they will be honored by the community.
During the first race the couple crossed remote areas of China and 1,000-mile stretches of empty seas before landing for fuel. They overcame severe hail storms and controllers who spoke minimal English before finishing their voyage March 27 at the airport just outside Paris where Charles Lindbergh landed on his 1927 transatlantic flight.
“It was like living in a different world, a fairy-tale world,” Lund-Bell said. “We saw all of these places you just read about. We’d fly over the Pyramids. I have some beautiful videos of the Sinai Peninsula. Or you’d see a sunset over Crete. It was indescribable. . . . It makes you feel as if you’re part of a world instead of a local area.”
