Thirteen years ago, Kelly Perkins underwent a heart transplant because of cardiomyopathy. Her new heart has been taking her to great heights ever since.

About 10 months after the surgery, Perkins completed her first ascent up the easier back side of Yosemite's Half Dome monolith. Climbs such as this are difficult for the average Joe, but for someone who is a transplant survivor it's even more monumental. Transplanted hearts usually lack vital nerve connections to the brain which help the body realize when muscles need more oxygen. Perkins doctor feels that intense exercise may have helped rebuild some of those lost connections so the body has at least a partial response.

Post-transplant, Perkins has scaled many famous climbs including Mount Kilamanjaro, the Matterhorn, and Mount Fuji. Her recent climb up the more difficult front side of Yosemite's Half Dome is a fitting close to a now complete circle. Though, with drive and spirit like Perkins', I imagine she'll be climbing again soon.

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A crash diet at age 19 left Richard Simmons bald, says the fitness guru. Which is, in essence, why he has such crazy, curly hair today. Sound strange? It is.

Simmons said he had 4,000 hair follicles transplanted after his unfortunate hair loss 41 years ago. The result? That massive head of hair he has today.

Simmons' story comes up as part of a larger story featured in USA Today about hair transplants that require the transplantation of only 120 follicles, and not the current standard of 2,000. Hair regeneration therapy is the name of this hairy breakthrough, and Intercytex is the company trying to market it. Studies show 11 of 19 men who have tried the procedure have successfully grown hair six months after treatment.

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10 hours. Six operating rooms. Nine surgical teams. And six new kidneys.

Johns Hopkins surgeons performed six simultaneous kidney transplants -- a surgery believed to be the first of its kind. Five of the six transplant candidates had family members willing to donate a kidney, but were incompatible for their family member. When a sixth donor -- an altruistic donor who was willing to donate to anyone in need -- stepped in, the final necessary piece of the puzzle was found. The others who were willing to donate may not have been a match for their family member, but they were matches for others who were waiting for a transplant. The surgeries were successful, and the lead surgeon reports that all donors and transplant recipients are doing well.

While most donated kidneys come from deceased donors, live donors are preferred because the success rates are higher. The six patients in this series of operations were matched through a live donor matching system created by Johns Hopkins.

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Brooke Zepp wasn't taking no for an answer. The 63-year-old Florida woman had a rare tumor deep in her abdomen. Her doctors told her that it was inoperable, and that she had only months left to live. Rather than accepting her fate, however, she asked someone else. Eventually, she ended up at the Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center Transplant Institute.

The team there did a surgery that was the first of its kind. They removed six of Zepp's internal organs -- the stomach, liver, pancreas, spleen, small intestine, and part of the large intestine -- to get at the tumor. The organs were left on ice while the tumor was removed, then put back in place, using artificial blood vessels to reconnect the blood supply.

Zepp claims to be feeling great and has a new lease on life. The surgery may lead to new procedures for operating on people with tumors that are tough to remove.

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It's a scary thought to think about some people who wake up one day with a pain in their abdomen, having found out they had a kidney stolen. Urban legends regarding this organ thievery have been around for ages. Well, they were true, and now a kidney transplant ring based out of India is getting shut down.

The hunt started in 1993 after authorities began trying to capture Doctor Amit Kumar. The evidence is mounted against him -- upwards of 600 kidneys are known to have been stolen under his command. You may be asking yourself, who in the world would sign up to take advantage of this service?

Clientele included needy patients from five countries. Even a couple of Americans were caught on the waiting list. But what about the victims? Indians from a poor background were scammed into selling their kidneys during an alleged job interview. But there was no job for these people to have -- only robbery. Thankfully this ring is getting busted, and hopefully the investigation roots out more criminals.

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A story like this is best summed up just like a doctor put it by saying the case is "extremely unusual." After receiving a liver transplant at the age of nine, Demi-Lee Brennan's immune system literally switched over to that of her donor's. She now has a different blood type, and doctors say nothing like this has ever been observed before.

In the beginning, they discovered she had liver failure and required a transplant. But after the operation, stem cells from the transplanted organ made their way to her bone marrow. This is how the incredible switch took place. Now doctors are trying to figure out if they can replicate the same results for other transplant surgeries.

Considering that the human system can reject transplants, it would be extremely beneficial to find a way to make the body change its own makeup to adapt a healthier organ. Demi-Lee is perfectly fine now, so maybe some day we'll see these amazing results on a regular basis!

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Those who have had organ transplants know that the regimen of anti-rejection drugs being part of the procedure's lifelong therapy. But, according to research out of Massachusetts, the days of needing to take anti-rejection drugs daily for a patient's entire life could seen be a distant memory.

The new process involved the weakening of the patient's immune system and then giving the organ recipient bone marrow from the organ donor.

In a sense, it's tricking the body into accepting the new organ using non-transplant material. To those organ recipients hopeful for getting off anti-rejection drugs forever, this is going to be seen as very good news.

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