From The Mind Of Wag...

Imagine this. A donor heart becomes available. Somewhere, several people desperately need a heart transplant. Each of them has a story. Each has people who love them. Each wants more time. So... Who gets the heart? And maybe the bigger question: Who decides? Before my own transplant, I certainly didn't understand everything happening behind the scenes. I knew there was a waiting list. I knew donated organs had to be matched with recipients. But I didn't fully understand how a particular heart ultimately makes its way to a particular person. And I think that's true for a lot of us. Because from the outside, it's easy to imagine someone somewhere simply making a decision: Give it to this person. That's not how it works. A Doctor Doesn't Simply Pick Someone Organ allocation uses a structured system designed to match donated organs with appropriate transplant candidates. For a heart, several factors can matter. Medical urgency. Blood type and other compatibility con...

  A railroad bridge operator brought his eight-year-old son to work. His name was John Griffith. His son’s name was Greg. The year was 1937. John operated a massive drawbridge spanning the Mississippi River. When ships needed to pass, he raised the bridge. When trains approached, he lowered it back into place. That afternoon, John raised the bridge and stepped away to eat lunch with his son. Then he heard it. The whistle of the Memphis Express. Four hundred passengers were racing toward an open bridge. John ran to the control room and reached for the lever. But before lowering the bridge, he looked into the enormous gearbox beneath him. Greg had fallen into the gears. John had only seconds to decide. He could leave the bridge open and allow the train to plunge into the river. Or he could pull the lever, close the bridge and crush his son. John buried his face in his arm and pulled the lever. The bridge descended. The train crossed safely. Through tear-filled eyes, John watched the ...

“I’m probably too old to be an organ donor.” Or maybe: “My health isn’t great. They wouldn’t be able to use anything anyway.” Those thoughts sound reasonable. But here’s something important to understand: That decision may not be yours to make. Age does not automatically disqualify someone from organ donation. Neither does having a medical history. Whether organs or tissues can actually be donated depends on many factors. Potential donors are evaluated individually by medical professionals when the time comes. So you don’t need to look at your age, your health history or the medications you take and decide: “Nobody could use anything from me.” Maybe they couldn’t. But maybe they could. And that’s the larger educational point. Sometimes what prevents a person from becoming an organ donor isn’t opposition to donation. It’s an assumption. I’m too old. I’m not healthy enough. They wouldn’t be able to use anything. And without ever asking, someone who might have been willing to donate has a...

There’s a question many people have about organ donation that they may never actually say out loud: “If I’m a registered organ donor, will doctors still do everything possible to save my life?” The answer is yes. Always. The medical team treating you is there for one reason: To save your life. The doctors and nurses providing lifesaving care are separate from the organ donation and transplant process. Organ donation does not become an option simply because someone is registered as a donor. First, medical professionals do everything they can to save the patient’s life. Only after lifesaving efforts have failed and death has been declared according to medical and legal standards can the possibility of organ donation be considered. That distinction matters. Because I’ve learned that many people aren’t necessarily opposed to organ donation. They’re uncertain about how it actually works. And uncertainty leaves room for some frightening assumptions: What if they see that little heart on my d...

I have listened to Paul Harvey for as long as I can remember. I loved the voice. The timing. The pause before the reveal. He could take an obscure moment from history and make you feel as though you were being entrusted with something the rest of the world had somehow missed. And if Paul Harvey told the story? I believed it. At least, I did until he told me about the bullet that impregnated a seventeen-year-old girl. That was the first time I remember listening and thinking: There is no damn way that happened. The story we heard According to the story, it happened during the Civil War. A young soldier was struck by a Minié ball. The bullet shattered his leg, ricocheted upward and passed through his scrotum, carrying away one of his testicles. At almost precisely the same moment, a seventeen-year-old girl standing near a house behind the battlefield screamed. The same bullet had supposedly continued across the battlefield and entered her abdomen. She survived. Two hundred seventy-eight ...

AN ORGAN DONATION EDUCATIONAL MOMENT Yesterday, I attended a LifeGift event celebrating Multicultural Awareness Month. One of the speakers said something that stayed with me. I’m paraphrasing, but the thought was essentially: “We come from different cultures. We speak different languages. But hope is the same for all of us.” Think about that in the context of organ donation. A donor and recipient may come from completely different worlds. Different cultures. Different languages. Different traditions. Different beliefs. Different life experiences. They may never have met. And yet, in one extraordinary moment, their stories become forever connected. The person whose heart now beats inside my chest may have experienced the world very differently than I do. I may never know. But I do know this: When my family and I were waiting for a heart, hope didn’t belong to a culture. It didn’t speak a particular language. It didn’t care where I came from. It was simply hope. And somewhere, in the mid...