Re: your article on organ donation, featuring Kimberly Gast, whose tragic death and subsequent organ donation saved four lives. My 3-year-old niece, Mirabella, awaits a liver transplant. My 35-year-old cousin, Chris, awaits a lung transplant. Mirabella has inoperable, fast-growing, liver cancer. Chris has idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a swift-moving, terminal lung disease.
Mirabella was adopted from Guatemala by my sister, Colleen. Colleen also has a 2-year-old daughter, Tulliah. Mirabella and Tulliah are as close as twins. Colleen is pregnant as well. Mirabella’s first stint on the transplant list resulted in no liver. Colleen told me of feverish dreams of getting The Phone Call for Mirabella’s liver. She’d wake up, but there’d be no call, just the sound of Mirabella throwing up. The other night she threw up 12 times. If the cancer doesn’t kill her, the chemo will. Mirabella has asked that her new liver be red, because red is her favorite color.
Chris is the 8th in our family to succumb to IPF. There is no treatment or cure; a lung transplant is the sole chance for life. Most IPF patients suffocate to death within 3 years. Over half of all IPF patients die on the list, waiting for a lung that never comes. If a lung transplant is successful, IPF does not move to the new lung.
When my mother died of IPF, her eyes gave another sight. We found that deeply comforting. My husband, children and I are registered organ donors. Death seems less final and futile. If I put my ear to someone’s chest, I may hear my child’s heart beating. That sound might be the only thing that prevents me from dying of grief.
I yearn for the day when being an organ donor is not the heroic exception, but rather what every responsible citizen does. Mirabella and Chris will die unless someone says yes to organ donation. Please register yourself and your family at www.donatelifecalifornia.org.
Deirdre Roney