When death gives life

(This originally appeared in my weekly column in The Outer Banks Sentinel.) To learn more about Organ Donation I have a link on the right of the blog page.

Wednesday morning, April 2 my son called from Duke Hospital with the news that a pair of lungs had been located that might be the answer to our prayers. You see, his wife Tricia has Cystic Fibrosis, a genetic disease that attacks (among other things) the lungs. It is a terminal disease – there is no cure – yet. And Tricia’s health had declined to the point where she has been in the hospital at Duke since just after Christmas and on a ventilator since the second week of January.

All day Wednesday we prayed and waited. Someone from Duke flew to another state to examine the lungs and determine if they would work for Tricia. In the mean time, Nathan’s blog overtook the internet. In a 24 hour period he had 100,000 hits. And just before 6PM he called me. “Dad, it’s a go!” As Gail and I were coming into Durham at 9:25 he called to say she the surgery had begun.

All night, five of us, including Tricia’s parents, waited in the waiting room of the NICU, where our granddaughter is thriving. Being there allowed us to drop in and see her during the night. It seemed like an eternity, but nine hours later at 6:30AM we received a call that Tricia was now in the ICU and that the surgery was complete. She has new lungs.

Her life will be forever changed. She has never been able to breathe deeply like the rest of us, and when she has tried, she always coughed. The doctors said that without the transplant she would have died within a year. Now, her life is extended, enabling her to watch her daughter grow. She’s literally received new life.

But that new life came at a great price, and I’m not talking about the cost of being hospitalized for months and major surgeries. That’s a whole ‘nuther story.

For Tricia to receive her new lungs someone had to die.

We don’t know who (that won’t be shared with us unless the donor’s family chooses to do so in a year or so) but someone died on Wednesday and had either made the choice ahead of time, or his/her loved ones made the choice to give someone else a chance at survival by donating organs. In fact, up to eight other people can be given new life from one person’s organs. Over 50 people’s lives can be enhanced by donated tissues. Can there be any greater gift?

A couple of timing things were pretty amazing. First, Wednesday was Nathan’s birthday. He’ll never receive a greater gift than being given more years with the wife he loves. The second is that April is National Organ Donation Awareness Month. The list of people waiting for organs is so great only because the list of available donors is so small. And to make it easier for us to become donors, our state has created an online organ donation registry. In NC you don’t have to wait until you get your next driver’s license anymore. You can sign up today to give someone else life. Go online to www.donatelifenc.org.

I’m a donor, have been since my college days. How about you?

I can’t pass up the spiritual application here. On a hill outside the ancient city of Jerusalem one Person willingly gave up His life and died, paying the penalty for the sin and disobedience of the human race and made life possible for anyone willing to receive it by faith.

Even though Jesus and I were strangers at one time, when He died for me and you, He did so that we might be called His friends. And He is quoted as saying that there is no greater love than when someone would die for His friends. New life is possible, but not without someone paying the price. The good news is that the price has been paid.


©2008 Rick Lawrenson