The organization also recovered more bone and joint restoration tissue grafts, allowing roughly 48,000 people to regain mobility and active lives after disease or trauma last year.

Donor Alliance has also launched Donate Life Colorado and Donate Life Wyoming Facebook pages, where it will bust myths surrounding donation, and answer questions from the public.

Connie says “If one life can breathe easier because of me, then I’ve gained my own measure of success. If I could speak to my donor I would say: thank you for helping to make people at a small county fair smile. You’re a success.”

“An argument erupted behind me,” Connie said. “I stood up to move to the other side of the table but my snow boot caught on the rung of the chair just as one man pushed another into me, knocking me over.”  Shortly thereafter, as Connie was still lying on the floor, a large man fell onto her legs. Connie sustained serious injuries: her left leg was broken and her right ACL was blown out.

Aside from the pain and day-to-day struggles that dealing with two injured legs presented, Connie’s injuries also meant she could not adequately do her job, which she had a great passion for. After serving as Montana’s property tax supervisor for 30 years, Connie was at the time working as the local county fair manager. Although the work was taxing (including everything from negotiating entertainment contracts to cleaning horse stalls), she absolutely loved it.

“Seeing smiling faces at a summertime county fair is one of the warmest feelings a heart can experience,” Connie said.

As a full year passed after the injury, Connie’s broken leg was casted and healed. She wore a brace on her right knee with the injured ACL, and knew her options for that leg were either to live with the injury in a brace for the rest of her life, or try an ACL transplant, using donated tissue from a deceased human donor. Eager to resume an active lifestyle and work for the county fair, Connie opted for the transplant.

The surgery didn’t require any large incisions, only 4 small holes where instruments expanded the skin around Connie’s knee for viewing and working. Doctors performed meniscus reconstruction and then anchored the donated tendon diagonally from her tibia to femur.

Following the surgery Connie was excited to get her leg back into working order. However, she was tired of the frequent doctor visits from the past year, and wasn’t pleased with the prospect of having to return again for physical therapy. Instead, she set up her own therapy routine at home.

“After a few harrowing days in a recliner I got on an exercise bike. I began slowly pedaling in front of the TV, an hour each morning and night. I had quite a setup. Morning Sudoku and coffee while pedaling to the Today Show, herbal tea and a sitcom at night,” she said. And the training worked; Connie’s doctors were very pleased with her gradual improvement in range of motion.

By Spring of 2010, after a year of working from home, Connie was elated to be able to get back to the fairgrounds and the work she loves.

“It’s now been one and a half years since my transplant.  I still get a little stiff if I don’t stay active, but I recently finished my second summertime county fair since surgery and reports from the public are that this was the best one in years,” she said.

Connie reflects on the gift of life that allowed her to return to work with earnestness and appreciation.

“I believe the body is the human’s earthly vessel.  Our deceased loved ones are hopefully in a wonderful place; their tissue is no longer needed by them.  I honor whoever is selfless enough to understand that,” Connie said. “We offer an unused blanket to a shivering homeless man, food to a starving child, spare change to a simple benefit drive or money in the collection plate at church.  We give.  It’s an odd feeling for me to be a recipient of any such gift because I’ve always been more of a giver, but I feel humbled in knowing someone gave tissue to me when I was in need.”

Connie is a registered organ, tissue and bone marrow donor. “As the old saying goes, if one life can breathe easier because of me, then I’ve gained my own measure of success. If I could speak to my donor I would say: thank you for helping to make people at a small county fair smile.  You’re a success.”

This all changed on a snowy day in 2009.  Driving home from dropping off a friend, a car slid out of its lane and struck Susan’s vehicle head on.  Witnesses called 911. Due to winter weather the emergency response was slow and Susan’s injuries were grave: on her right leg her kneecap was ripped off, both her tibia and fibula were fractured and her foot was dislocated.

Once at the hospital, Susan’s leg was saved with surgically implanted titanium rods.  “I hoped I would be able to walk again,” she said.

Despite this hope, Susan was told that she could never ride again.  As a result of her injury, she had to greatly reduce the number of horses she owned, from 26 to 10. Her summer camp was unable to continue, but the remaining horses were taken care thanks to generous help from previous campers.

In a heartbreaking development, her injury then became worse; the metal rods in her leg broke and the doctors began to talk about amputation.  Susan refused to accept that option, but nearly every doctor she saw told her the same thing.  She could not walk at all by this point, and spent all of her time in a wheelchair.

Desperate to avoid amputation, she found Dr. Mark Myerson through an internet search.   Describing her initial conversation with Dr. Myerson, Susan said, “He was the only doctor who did not talk only about amputation.  He promised me nothing except his help.” Susan did not have the option of a traditional ankle replacement because when the rods in her leg broke, the screws had become embedded in her ankle, causing even more damage.

In April of 2010, Susan began the first of several surgeries with Dr. Myerson that would attempt to repair her leg. First her entire ankle was removed and bone cement was added to take the place of missing bone.  In the second surgery, Dr. Myerson added bone grafts to the ankle, and in a third surgery he added AlloStem® Stem Cell Bone Growth Substitute in an attempt to jumpstart her own body’s reproduction of bone in the injured leg. AlloStem uses adult mesenchymal stem cells derived from fat tissue, as well as bone from deceased tissue donors, which helps to stimulate natural bone formation. Susan calls AlloStem a “miracle little thing.”   Dr. Myerson said there were no guarantees that AlloStem would work to re-grow the bone in her leg, but by December, bone began to populate in small amounts.

Susan was told in January, 2011 that her leg no longer risked amputation. Since then, significant bone growth has continued in her injured leg.  By spring of 2011, Susan was able to have her knee cap replaced and she realized her initial goal – she walked again.

“The trip to Dr. Myerson’s office is a five hour round trip – with no traffic! But I don’t care. I am going to go for two, three, even four opinions before losing a limb,” Susan said.

Now she is looking forward to the day of returning to her passion of horseback riding. “One of my dreams is to take my daughter and the kids [who visit the summer camp] on a small trail ride, but I will not know if I can ride again until August.”

At 53, Susan has five children, including a daughter who is stationed in Iraq as a medical technician.  Susan is looking forward to the day when she can send her daughter a video of her mounting a horse for the first time in more than two and a half years.

It wasn’t long before Rachel discovered she could no longer “grin and bear” her meniscus injury. She had to have the injured tissue replaced with an allograft – sidelining her for months from any physical activity.

“It was a difficult decision,” recalls Rachel. “But movement is everything to me. I knew I had to have the procedure.”

Today, Rachel is back in competition. In fact, she completed the Hawaii Ironman 70.3 Triathlon in May 2009, something she only dreamed of prior to her allograft meniscus replacement. Inspired by her experience, Rachel chose orthopedics as her field of specialty in medical school and currently is an MD candidate at Rush University Medical Center.

In 2010, Margie tore her ACL while playing with a child in an inflatable jumping house that she was sponsoring at a church event. Immediately after the injury she was unable to straighten her leg or bear weight on it. Following an MRI that confirmed the tear, Margie decided right away that she would pursue an allograft tissue transplant to repair her knee, if possible.

“I love to bike, play tennis, power walk and swim,” said Margie. “With the injury I was limited. I had a neighbor living with the same injury and I didn’t want to do the same thing.”

However, the gift of tissue donation was not something that Margie took lightly or for granted.

“I was educated in what it means to have donated organs or tissue available, and I trust the system,” said Margie, who works as a parish nurse.  “It’s also a faith journey. I want to live my life fully and this offered me fullness and I didn’t want to pass that up.”

Margie’s family was definitely impacted by the accident, surgery and slow road back to recovery. But Margie is confident that because of her gift of life from a tissue donor she will be able to have a richer life with her husband and their 10-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son. Since her tendon transplant surgery in August of 2010, Margie has experienced a profound recovery. She is back to the activities she enjoys including activities with their children and exercising.

“Life can be grossly unpredictable and dangerous and unfair. I received the tendon from a 19-year-old donor. In that generosity, I got to walk again. My faith enters in deeply in understanding the gravity of this. There is not a final chapter when God is part of the equation and he can bring about renewal and healing.”

Also, Margie is committed to keeping her donor and donor family in her thoughts moving forward.

“We pray for that family and realize that while our life normalizes, there will always be an empty seat at their holiday tables. There are a lot of people in my life that are aware of that, and I am not hesitant to share the story.”

According to the story: “Brian J. Cole, MD, MBA, presented his group’s findings at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Arthroscopy Association of America … Cole reported that the procedure could reduce pain, increase range of motion and improve joint function in the long term.”

Five years ago, we were fortunate to meet Chen,  an internationally recognized martial artist and Tai Chi instructor and a truly inspiring person.  Chen risked losing her career following a severe knee injury, but has experienced a remarkable recovery following a transplanted allograft from AlloSource. Chen has returned to martial arts competition with great success and has become a friendly advocate of tissue donation. (Chen represented AlloSource as a float rider aboard the 2009 Donate Life float in the Tournament of Roses Parade.)

Congrats, May!

A short tour of the leading laboratory where AlloSource develops new life-saving and life-enhancing tissue allografts

Discover the laboratory where AlloSource ensures the safety of its allografts

Take a look inside AlloSources cutting-edge stem cell laboratory, where the company is developing new types of allografts that promote tissue regeneration

Or, learn more about skin allografts used for the treatment of burns, including function, structure, donor recovery and clinical application.

Amidst the constantly changing world of medicine, innovative research from some of the world’s leading surgeons is finding new ways to use donated human tissue to treat a host of medical conditions.

Registered donors and their families donate this allograft tissue in the same way organs are donated. It is used in many life-saving and enhancing medical procedures already, with numerous new opportunities on the horizon.

“Many people don’t realize it, but donated human tissue is used in many surgical applications, saving peoples’ lives and limbs daily,” says Dr. Ross Wilkins from the Denver Clinic for Extremities at Risk, a highly specialized group in the management of conditions and diseases that place people at risk of losing a limb. “Allograft tissue is used to replace damaged structures in the body, from the ligaments and tendons of major league sports players, bones and joints of military men and women, to the musculoskeletal structures, teeth, skin and spinal components of average citizens.”

AlloSource, one of the nation’s largest accredited tissue processing facilities, recently provided tissue to a man severely injured on a construction site. After a crane on the site hit a power line, Manuel Salazar was struck by 150,000 volts and was severely burned and lost both arms and both legs. First, allograft skin was used to cover his severe burns, then allograft bone and tissue were used to help build him a new arm and shoulder, so he could be successfully be fitted for a prosthetic arm and once again complete everyday tasks such as brushing his teeth and scratching his head.

“Donated human tissue has completely changed my life,” says Salazar. “Although I was forever changed by my accident, the new possibilities that allograft tissue have provided for me have restored my hope.”

On New Years Day Salazar will be sponsored by AlloSource to appear in the 2010 Rose Parade aboard the Donate Life float entitled New Life Rises. Salazar will join 23 other riders representing millions of people touched by organ and tissue donation, including donor families, living donors, transplant recipients and transplant candidates.

Dr. Wilkins and plastic surgeon Dr. William Brown operated on Salazar and have innovative surgeries for many patients using human allograft tissue for promoted healing, growth or reconstruction.

“The possibilities for the use of human tissue in modern medicine are truly thrilling,” Wilkins says. “Soon, we will know more about the growth biology of the human body, about regenerating bone and tissue and using donor stem cells to re-grow physical structures. We’ll have more of the information we need to achieve long-term success with groundbreaking procedures such as full limb transplantation.”

Currently, physicians of different specialties are working together to solve some of the most difficult issues in limb reconstruction. Surgical teams from the Denver Clinic for Extremities at Risk and Colorado State University Animal Cancer Center have devised a method for live, full joint transplants. Additional work is needed to learn how to safely block rejection.

“As more people learn about these remarkable discoveries and choose to be tissue donors, we will be able to find new ways to maximize those gifts and surgical teams will be able to provide patients with restored function and movement we only dream about today,” says Thomas Cycyota, chief executive officer of AlloSource.