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A Transplant Isn’t a Cure | An Organ Donation Educational Moment

There’s a moment after a successful transplant when it can look like the story is over. The failing organ is gone. The donated organ is working. The recipient survived. Eventually, there may be pictures of them smiling. Going home. Returning to work. Celebrating a transplant anniversary. Living again. From the outside, it can look like: They’re fixed. But there’s something important to understand about organ transplantation: A transplant can save your life without ending your medical story. The Body Knows It Isn’t Yours A transplanted organ may be exactly what someone needs to stay alive. But the recipient’s immune system doesn’t understand the story behind it. It doesn’t know about the donor. It doesn’t understand the gift. It doesn’t know that this organ is the reason its owner is still alive. It recognizes something foreign. And its natural response can be to attack and kill it. That is rejection. So transplant recipients need medications that suppress (fool) the immune system and h...
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Someone Said Yes. What Happens Next? | An Organ Donation Educational Moment

Someone said yes. Maybe that person registered as an organ donor years earlier. Maybe a family is now honoring the decision their loved one made. Maybe a family, in the middle of an unimaginable loss, has been asked to consider donation. However that moment arrives, we often talk about the yes as though it is the end of the story. It isn’t. In many ways, it is the beginning of an extraordinary chain of events. Because a decision to donate does not mean doctors simply remove an organ, find someone who needs it and perform a transplant. What happens between donation becoming possible and another person receiving an organ involves evaluation, coordination, matching, medical judgment, transportation and teams of people working within very real time constraints. UNOS First, Donation Has to Be Possible Not everyone who wants to donate will ultimately be able to donate organs. Medical professionals evaluate a potential donor to determine whether organ donation is medically possible and which...
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The Letter Never Sent | Remember: Stories about uncovering what was never really lost.

Do the words we never say disappear or do we carry them with us? The letter had been in the drawer for twenty-seven years. He found it while looking for a passport. That was the irritating part. He wasn’t sorting through old photographs or cleaning out boxes in the attic. He wasn’t searching for memories. He needed his passport. Instead, beneath expired warranties, instruction manuals for appliances they no longer owned and a handful of birthday cards his wife apparently couldn’t bring herself to throw away, he found an envelope. His handwriting was on the front. Dad. Nothing else. No address. No stamp. Just one word. He knew what it was before he opened it. He sat down on the edge of the bed. For a while, he simply held it. His father had been dead for nineteen years. The letter was older than that. Twenty-seven years earlier, they had argued. He couldn’t remember exactly what started it anymore. Something about work. Or money. Or one of those decisions a grown son believes is entirel...
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The Husband Who Gave His Wife the Heel of the Bread | Wait... Is That Actually True?

Wait… Is That Actually True? It was her fiftieth birthday. As he had done so many mornings before, her husband brought her breakfast in bed. He had prepared everything himself and arranged it carefully on the tray. But when she looked at the toast, her heart sank. Once again, he had given her the heel of the loaf. The hard, crust-covered piece she had never liked. Of all the days, she had hoped this one might be different. She had hoped that after all their years together, he might finally notice. That on her fiftieth birthday, he might give her one of the soft slices from the middle instead of keeping it for himself. Her disappointment finally broke through. “Why do you always give me the heel?” Her husband looked surprised. Then he answered: “Because it’s my favorite part.” All those years, she had believed he was giving her the piece no one wanted. All those years, he believed he was giving her the best. What she experienced as thoughtlessness had been intended as love. I have alway...
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The Donor Was a Person | An Organ Donation Educational Moment

We use phrases like: Donor heart. Donor kidney. Donor lungs. They’re useful words. They help doctors, transplant teams, recipients and families talk about something incredibly complex. But there’s something those words can unintentionally do. They can turn a person into an organ. Before there was a donor heart, there was a person. Someone had a name. Someone had people they loved—and people who loved them. They had favorite foods. Songs they knew every word to. Inside jokes. Bad habits. Plans for next weekend. People they expected to see again. They had a life that mattered completely apart from what eventually happened to their organs. Before “Donor” Came a Life We often tell organ donation stories from the recipient’s side. Someone was dying. An organ became available. A transplant happened. A life was saved. That story is true. But it isn’t the whole story. Because while one family was receiving the news they desperately hoped for, another family was experiencing something entirely ...
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The Garden Gate | Remember: Stories about uncovering what was never really lost.

How far do we have to travel before we realize what we were looking for was already home? The gate still stuck. He smiled when he discovered that. Forty-three years had passed since he had last pushed it open, but apparently no one had ever bothered to fix the bottom hinge. He lifted slightly as he pushed, just as his father had taught him when he was a boy. Up, then over. The gate scraped across the concrete and swung open. Some things, apparently, remembered you too. He stood there for a moment with one hand resting on the weathered wood. The house beyond it wasn’t his anymore. It hadn’t been for decades. A young couple owned it now. They had bought it from the family who bought it from the family his parents had sold it to when they moved away. He knew none of them. But when he had knocked on the front door and explained that he grew up there, the woman who answered had smiled. “Would you like to see the backyard?” He almost said no. He wasn’t entirely sure why he had stopped in the...
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The Window Seat | Remember: Stories about uncovering what was never really lost.

What changes when we stop trying to outrun ourselves? He always chose the aisle. Not because he was afraid of flying or needed the extra room. He chose it because the aisle made leaving easier. After years of traveling for work, he had developed a system. Laptop out before takeoff. Earbuds in. Inbox open the moment the Wi-Fi connected. By the time the wheels touched down, he could have half a day’s work behind him. Airports no longer felt like places. They were transitions. Houston. Atlanta. Chicago. Denver. Gate numbers. Boarding groups. Rental cars. Hotel rooms. He knew which airports had decent coffee, which security lines moved fastest and exactly how late he could arrive at the gate without hearing his name over the speaker. He was good at traveling. Mostly because he had learned how to make it disappear. So, when he booked the early flight home that Thursday morning, he chose the aisle. At least, he thought he had. The gate agent looked at his boarding pass, then at her screen. “...
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