When I decided to write a series on organ donation and organ transplants, I put out a call for people to contact me. I was overwhelmed by the number of responses I received and the stories that many of the people had to tell.

One woman, Susan May, wrote and offered to share her story about her son Nick, and the heart transplant he received when he was a baby.

Here is her story:

Nick was born with a three chambered heart. He had his first surgery at five days old, another at three and a half months, another at one year old and received a heart transplant two weeks before he turned two. He has just celebrated his 20th birthday.

My husband and I met in college.  We married and wanted a large family. My husband works in management in the production industry and I’m a homemaker. Nick is the youngest of our four children. If he had been born three weeks earlier my husband and I would have had four children under the age of four. We had no idea Nick had a bad heart until after his birth.

Just before Nick turned two we were told that the doctors thought Nick had a better chance of living with a transplant than having another surgery. We were surprise by the suggestion because we had always thought of a transplant as a back up plan. The longest an adult had lived with a transplant at that time was twenty years. Not long if you are talking about a two year old having one. We had hoped that Nick could live with his own heart until he was much older, then maybe get a transplant. Nick’s brothers and sister were too small to understand what was wrong but knew that their parents were concern about their baby brother.

We made a decision early in Nick’s life not to treat Nick any differently than we did our other children. We wanted him to have a great quality of life for however long we had him. Quality of Life isn’t living in a bubble, it is experiencing life and becoming a part of society. Nick went to school just like our other kids. He graduated from high school and is now attending college.

As a family we have traveled to 49 of the 50 states,13 countries in Europe and spent a week in Ottawa, Canada. Nick water skis, snow skis, plays tennis, wrestled in middle school and wants to be a sport manager for a football team.

Each year on Nick’s transplant anniversary we talk about what happen on that date, and I say a prayer for Nick’s donor family. As happy as that day is for us it is equality sad for them. We appreciate more than words can say them giving us Nick through donating their child’s organs. If they hadn’t Nick wouldn’t be alive today.

“Organ donation saves lives like mine,” Nick says when asked about his transplant. “Donate Life”

People are looking for heros. They think of sports figures, doctors, policeman but my heroes are people who through their pain think of others and give the gift of life by donating organs. There is no greater gift outside of Jesus’s gift of salvation.

You can find out more about Nick’s story by reading Nick’s New Heart or checking out www.susanCmay.com . Added at 3PM, EDST – Susan has just told me that if you go look at her site, the first person from now who mentions that they got to her site through here will win a copy of her book.

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Nick’s story is not all that unusual these days, but it’s not common enough. Thousands of people are on waiting lists for organs, many of them die waiting. No matter what happens in the future with Nick, that gift of life given to him so many years ago has allowed him to grow into the young man he has become. You just can’t put a price tag on something like that.

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Images: Newscom and iStock

Post from: Blisstree

“Heroes are people who give life”

Yesterday, I wrote about little Kaylee Wallace, a dying 2-month old infant in Ontario, Canada (A transplant planned, a transplant not done ). It’s a heart breaking story of parents who were told that their baby would die and their decision to give the chance of life to another deathly ill infant, Lily O’Connor, whose family is from many miles to the east, in the province of Prince Edward Island.

The Wallaces were told that if Kaylee was taken off the respirator, when she fell asleep, she would die. So, they decided that this was what had to be done. That if they allowed it to be done like this, Kaylee’s heart would be viable and usable for another child. In this case, 1-month-old Lily.

It’s hard to say fortunately or unfortunately, but what happened next surprised everyone. Kaylee didn’t fall asleep for an hour – and she didn’t stop breathing. The O’Connor family learned that the transplant wasn’t going to happen, so they go back to waiting, hoping, perhaps praying, that a miracle will happen. And Kaylee’s parents have been left with a backlash that wasn’t expected.

It’s bad enough that they have this tragic situation to deal with. They made their decision based on what they were told by the doctors, what they saw with their own eyes, and what they felt was the best thing to do given the whole picture. For that, they have been accused of wanting their daughter to die and in participating in trying to kill her.

Now, they are faced with the possibility that Kaylee will live – and they won’t love her any less. They will do their best to provide and love her as they would have anyway.

I challenge anyone who would criticize their decision either way to think about what they would do – what they would truly do – if faced with the same circumstances. The truth is that unless we’re faced with it, we don’t know what we would do. We *think* we know what we’d do. But if you’d asked the Wallaces before their child’s birth if they would make a decision, I’d be willing to bet that their answer would have been “absolutely not.”

Here is more on this sad story – because it truly is a sad one and I feel for both families and their friends: Baby Kaylee struggles on .

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Click here to read more in this organ donation series.

Image: MorgueFile.com

Post from: Blisstree

Judge not…lest you have to decide one day

Times have changed in how patients who are potential donors are considered to be dead and therefore able to be organ donors.

It used to be that you had to be brain dead, with no signs of brain activity, cardiac – heart – death wasn’t in the equation. This has changed an now those who are heart dead can be organ donors but the teams have to move fast for the organs to be viable.

I came across this story this morning of two families, two infants, and two sad stories. In a nutshell, one baby can’t live. She goes into cardiac arrest when she sleeps and needs to be brought back to life each time. Because of this, 2-month-old Kaylee Wallace lives on a respirator in the province of Ontario. Many miles away, is another infant, 1-month-old Lily O’Connor who desperately needs a heart. Lily, whose family is from Prince Edward Island, needs this heart to survive.

The ambitious plan was to take Kaylee off her life support and allow her to fall asleep. Nature would take its course and her heart would stop, allowing her organs to be used. But Kaylee didn’t fall asleep and she didn’t die.

There are lots of comments and arguments on both sides of the issue. Some people are horrified that Kaylee’s parents would even contemplate this, others back them up 100%. All I see is a very tragic situation and one set of parents was trying to do something unthinkable (saying good-bye to their baby) to allow another set of parents have a chance at life with theirs.

You can read the story in detail at CBC.com: Baby’s risky heart transplant called off .

Please let us know what you think.

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Click here to read more in this organ donation series.

Image: Stock.xchng

Post from: Blisstree

A transplant planned, a transplant not done