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Lisa Pisano was lying in a hospital bed at NYU Langone Health, hooked up to beeping monitors and an array of tubes. Her surgical wounds were still healing, and she looked tired. But the 54-year-old New Jersey woman said she hasn't felt this good in years.
"I'm feeling better and better and better every day," said Pisano, 54, of Cookstown, N.J. "I got somewhat of me back. Not there yet. But I'm getting there."
Ten days earlier, Pisano became the second living person in the world to get a kidney from a genetically modified pig transplanted into her body to replace her own failing organs, her doctors announced Wednesday. A Massachusetts man was the first to get a pig kidney last month.
Pisano also got a thymus gland from the same genetically engineered pig to help prevent her body from rejecting the kidney, as well as a pump to shore up her failing heart.
"I'm amazed," said Pisano during a bedside interview two days before her kidney transplant was announced publicly. "I'm absolutely amazed that it's an option for me...