Reprints of Articles about Organ Donation to Increase Awareness of this Vital Act of Kindness

…from the New York Times, February 16th, 2005 METROPOLITAN DESK by Marc Santora

Linked Forever by the Ultimate Gift; One Woman’s Death Provides Life for Another

Although the two never met, Maxine Watson saved Carol Call’s life. In fact, Ms. Watson saved at least two lives and helped heal dozens of other people. She did so in death, having arranged for her organs to be donated to those who needed them most.
Breathing through lungs that were put into her body only 48 hours earlier, Mrs. Call wanted to pass a simple message to Ms. Watson’s family: “Thank you.”

There are 87,000 people in need of an organ transplant at any given moment in America, and every day at least 17 of them die waiting, according to the United network for Organ Sharing, a nonprofit organization that helps match organs and patients.

Mrs. Call was lucky.

Her new life was the culmination of a wondrous process. It began with the Watson family’s decision to donate. Then came the tense hours of waiting as nurses kept the organs healthy after the brain had died; the frantic midnight phone calls matching patients with organs; and in the end a mad dash to get Ms. Watson’s lungs to a hospital in the same city.

The process also offers a rare glimpse into an often misunderstood world, where confidentiality agreements usually keep donor families from learning the names of those they have saved and keep recipients from learning he names of their saviors.
Ultimately, this is a story of two women linked, in life and death. Maxine Watson, 44, did not have much cause to think about death. Sure, she had high blood pressure, but she had never been seriously sick. Yet as she watched news of the tsunami in South Asia on television with her longtime partner, Neville Samuel, death was on her mind.
“She said, ‘You see all them people dying?’” Mr. Samuel recalled, tears filling his eyes. “She said if anything happens to me, you should help them.’” It was not an explicit request that her organs be donated, but the intention was clear.

She was fond of quoting a spiritual aphorism. “If we meet and you forget me, it means nothing. But if you meet Jesus and forget him, you have lost everything.” But she did not belong to any particular denomination.

In addition to the small acts of charity that seem easier to recall in sadness, her family said, Ms. Watson subscribed to the broad view that each person had an obligation to his or her neighbor. In her native country, Barbados, that was just the way of things. “Everyone from Barbados is family to one another,” said her sister, Pauline Ellington.

Ms. Watson came to New York eight years ago to make a better life for her family, particularly her two children back home, Petra, now 12, and John, 26. During those years, while she worked as a hairdresser, it had proved harder than she thought to become a citizen and to bring her children here, but she expected to complete the process this year.

It had been eight years since she had seen her daughter, and the two were a short time away from a reunion for Petra’s 21st birthday when relatives called Petra with terrible news. Ms. Watson had collapsed in her home with a stroke and had died. Petra rushed to get a visa, and two days later was at Bellevue Hospital Center.
At this sad, vulnerable time, workers for the New York Organ Donor Network approached this family with a request.

Would they donate her organs?
Without hesitation, the family said, “Take everything you need.”
“I want to know where the heart goes,” said Petra, “because my mother has a big heart.”

By the time the family said their final goodbyes on Jan. 20, a Thursday evening, and clipped a lock of Ms. Watson’s hair for a keepsake, the transplant coordinating team of Christine Chamberlain and Rich J. Raffule was already hard at work.

Ms. Watson had been brain dead for more than 24 hours, and although she was already on a ventilator to keep her organs functioning, they could not start deciding where her organs would go until the family officially gave permission.

Contrary to popular belief, simply marking the organ donor box when getting a driver’s license does not allow organs to be taken. The closest living relative must still sign off. In this case, that was Petra, and it had taken her two days to arrive.

But as the clock ticks, organs deteriorate, particularly the lungs, so speed is crucial.
The laws governing when a person is considered brain dead are very stringent, and everything medically possible must be done to keep a patient alive. Often, as in this case, it takes several hours for a person’s brain to stop functioning completely. If the patient is taken to the hospital before the lungs fail, a ventilator can keep the lungs going even after the brain has ceased working.

Ms. Chamberlain, who has been a transplant coordinator for more than five years, is well versed in keeping organs alive when the brain is dead.
She had had her doubts about the viability of Ms. Watson’s heart because early tests showed….

the full text of this article can be viewed at the New York Times website, www.nyt.com