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...
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...