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FEATURE:
Organ Transplants
May 11, 2007 Episode no. 1037
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BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Each year in the United States there are 29,000 organ transplants. The relationship between donor families and the recipients of their loved one's organs is complex and emotional, involving both gratitude and guilt. Judy Valente reports.
JUDY VALENTE: It's a service that takes place once a year in springtime at Loyola University Medical Center outside Chicago, a nondenominational candle-lighting ceremony to remember those who, in death, donated their organs so others could live. Many who attend are awaiting transplants. Those wearing surgical masks are recent organ recipients. Their immune systems are still weak. Among them, 46-year-old Ben Mazzone, who underwent a double lung transplant last year. In the audience, the Walker family who came to remember 11-year-old Chance, a sensitive, tow-headed boy who was known to give his allowance to the homeless. Chance's parents found him in his bedroom hanging from a bathrobe belt. It might have been suicide, or just a tragic accident, they say.
CONNIE WALKER  (Chance's Mother, speaking at service): We thought of how Chance wanted to help people and knew the way that could happen now was to donate his young, healthy organs.
VALENTE: Chance's younger sisters remember him through poetry.
AURORA WALKER (Chance's Sister, reading poem at service): You are my family. Without you I am lonely. So stay with me, even though I am withoutÖ
VALENTE: It is a moment to reflect on the mystery that unites the people who died and those who receive their organs.
MARY MCGILLICUDDY (Social Worker, University of Loyola Medical Center): The question almost always comes up, why me? Why did I survive when someone else had to die? I try to remind them that people are born and people die every single day, and that their living is not directly attached to the fact that another person died. They have been gifted with an organ of someone who died, but that person did not die in order for them to get an organ.
VALENTE: Ben Mazzone, seen here with his twin brother, Pat, had been healthy and active nearly all his life. He considered becoming a priest.
BEN MAZZONE (Organ Recipient): I was more Catholic than the pope. I was so involved in my church. I literally lived at church.
VALENTE: About six years ago, Ben's health began to change dramatically.

Mr. MAZZONE: As I was climbing up the stairs, my mother noticed I was getting winded more and more each time, and she was a little nervous about it, and I just kept thinking it's nothing, don't worry about it. I'm in my mid-30s, late 30s, a little overweight, you know. I'm getting older, not really exercising. It's just that I'm getting old.
VALENTE: Doctors at first thought he had asthma. Mazzone was diagnosed in May 2001 with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a degenerative lung disease.
Mr. MAZZONE: My initial thought was that I'm going to get through this because God's on my side. You know, I've been there for him, he's going to be there for me. But then when I saw the mortality rates and the prognosis and what's going to happen, I got really angry with God. When I was first told by the doctor that I was going to be put on the transplant list, it was complete fear. I just kept picturing myself lying on the operating table, my chest cut open. At some point I wondered, you know, how could God hate me so much? I was not aware that I was that close to dying. They called me and said they had a set of lungs, and we went to the hospital. By the time I got to the hospital, I had passed out.
VALENTE: Doctor Michael Eng was part of Mazzone's surgical team.

Dr. MICHAEL ENG (Surgeon, University of Loyola Medical Center): He was probably as close to death as you could get.
VALENTE: The doctors soon made a terrible discovery. The lungs the hospital had acquired were not suitable for transplant. What transpired then was a series of events Mazzone's physicians describe as nothing short of miraculous. Almost immediately another set of lungs became available.
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Dr. ENG: To find two within a 24-hour period -- I actually never heard of it. It's pretty much -- it's almost impossible.
VALENTE: But the lungs were in Buffalo, and Loyola staff would have to fly there to get them. And President Bush was visiting Chicago that day, so air traffic out of O'Hare Airport was halted. Loyola managed to secure White House permission to take off from Chicago. But when it was time to leave Buffalo, a near-white out snowstorm engulfed the airport there.

Dr. ENG: I didn't want to take off. I would have been in favor, for sure, of staying on the ground and staying there. But we knew we had to get the organs back, and if there was any chance that we could take off and make it, then we said that we were going to do it.
VALENTE: Mazzone successfully underwent surgery last October on a Friday the 13th.
Mr. MAZZONE (reading letter): Dear Donor Family: I know I will never be able to properly thank you for the gift of life you have given me...
VALENTE: An organ transplant association passes these letters on to the families of donors and leaves it to them whether to respond.
Mr. MAZZONE (reading letter): Your family and your loved one will always be intertwined in my life and the lives of my family, both physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Sincerely, Benjamin.
VALENTE: Mazzone knows only that his donor was a young woman.
Mr. MAZZONE: She's like my sister. She's my family. That's the only way I can put it. I want to honor her memory. I want her husband or parents to know she lives on.
VALENTE: Mazzone has not received a response. Connie and Chuck Walker understand why. They haven't answered similar letters from Chance's organ recipients.
CHUCK WALKER: We're grieving a lot of different things, and the folks that are receiving organs are also grieving in their own way. One of the things is I don't know what my emotions would be if I were to meet these people. And I don't know if it would be good for them if we broke down in front of them.

Ms. WALKER: You look for answers why. Why did that happen? Why? What was he thinking, and what would make sense? And then you kind of come to this point that you don't really have the way to get that answer, and so you have to go back to your faith.
Mr. WALKER: The standing ovation was a thanks from the many families...
Ms. WALKER: ...to the whole process. To see all those lives being transformed, I was feeling thankful that we could be a part of that.
VALENTE: The transplant has given Ben Mazzone's life new purpose. Though he's put aside plans for the priesthood, he says he's more intent than ever on nurturing his relationships and leading what he calls a holy life.
Mr. MAZZONE: I'm not looking anymore for the, you know, parting of the Red Sea. I'm recognizing every morning I wake up and take a breath, that individual breath is a miracle.
VALENTE: A miracle made possible for the fortunate few by anonymous organ donors, represented here at the chapel service by one table of burning candles.
For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWS WEEKLY, I'm Judy Valente in Maywood, Illinois.
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Related R & E Material:
Transplant Ethics, September 24, 2004
Organ Donation, May 31, 2002
Ethics of Organ Donations, November 12, 1999
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Related Links:
LifeLink Foundation
Mayo Clinic: Organ Donation
National Donor Sabbath
PBS: Online NewsHour: Organ Donation
KGO-TV: "Organ donor families get rare chance to meet recipients" by Pamela Tom, April 28, 2007
NPR: "In Baltimore, five kidney donors meet five recipients" by Luke Burbank, November 23, 2006
American Medical News: "Transplant patients seek to share more than organs" by Andis Robeznieks, June 14, 1004
Park Ridge Center for Faith, Health and Ethics: "Wading through Blood and Suffering" by Jennifer Girod, February 2001
Washington Post Health Talk: Organ Donation, June 15, 1999
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Related Reading:
RAISING THE DEAD: ORGAN TRANSPLANTS, ETHICS AND SOCIETY by Ronald Munson
THE ETHICS OF ORGAN TRANSPLANTS edited by Arthur Caplan
ORGAN TRANSPLANTATION: MEANING AND REALITIES edited by Stuart Youngner
ORGAN TRANSPLANTATION IN RELIGIOUS, ETHICAL AND SOCIAL CONTEXT: NO ROOM FOR DEATH edited by William DeLong
TRANSPLANTATION ETHICS by Robert Veatch
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