The night Sara passed away, I was sitting in a local restaurant, in a quiet corner in a quiet table crying my eyes out as I tried to communicate online the terrible news when my cell phone rang. It was a woman from the NEOB who informed me that Sara was an organ donor, and despite her widespread metastatic cancer, she could still donate her corneas because they are "avascular." That is, they have no blood flow so aren't at risk of being contaminated. Imagine the sublime ridiculousness of being there as this woman asked me 1,000 questions about Sara's opium habits and number of times she'd been hospitalized for Hepatitis. An endless series of ridiculous questions you simply would not believe. Finally after an hour I hung up, and was told to expect a letter telling me what finally happened.
April 17 or so I received a nice letter from them telling me that her corneas had been used to help restore the eyesight to two separate individuals. Of course, the won't tell us more about this but if there are two cornea transplant recipients who suddenly find they can see great, but can't drive because they are too distracted by the details, we'll all know what happened.
Talking to that insensitive, idiot woman was just one more thing, in such a long list of things, that you did for Sara. I commend you for not hanging up on her. (However, I do hope that you did yell or at least snarl at her a bit.) Sara would have been so pleased, and, I think, amused, to know that someone got her corneas.
Posted by: aura | May 02, 2009 at 04:01 AM
Hi Aura,
Actually the young lady was very sensitive, the issue was a legal one. She had 100 questions which by law she had to ask and have answered explicitly, every single one, before they could accept them. They're trying to protect themselves, and make sure that the recipients don't suffer worse things than not receiving the transplants.
But still, it was just a sublimely ridiculous thing to go through, you know?
Erik
Posted by: Erik Squires | May 02, 2009 at 11:17 AM
erik, that is comforting that a bit of sara is bringing relief and joy to a couple of people!
when my mother died last year, the tissue donation people called in the middle of the night with the million questions. it was bizarre. "was your mother a drug-using slut? did she travel?" in the end, she didn't pass the test, but the donor people were totally sweet; they consider us a donor family anyway, for giving it the old college try.
Posted by: kathy a. | May 05, 2009 at 12:19 PM
I remember being exhausted and a little outraged when all of the preemie-research groups started in on me after my daughters died. They would have sounded like normal, sane, rational questions to someone whose guts hadn't just been ripped out with grief.
To me, it sounded as if they were saying, "We're not going to rest until we determine that the girls died because of something you did." And maybe I did come off as a little bitter and hostile at times, although I did try my best to keep it together.
It must take a very strong person (I'm giving the benefit of the doubt and assuming it's not just a very oblivious person) to make that initial contact with the bereaved.
Posted by: Amorette | May 05, 2009 at 04:20 PM
It must take a very strong person ... to make that initial contact with the bereaved.
The high point of some jobs is the day you realize you don't have to do them forever. I'd bet there's a lot of churn in that one.
Posted by: Ron Sullivan | May 14, 2009 at 09:01 PM