Organ donation non-profit helps turn one family's loss into another's hope
North Jersey| Lindy Washburn
CARMINE GALASSO/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Bill Reitsma of the New Jersey Sharing Network, which helps arrange organ transplants, next to a quilt showing donors' faces. He has advocated for organ donation for more than three decades.
Bill Reitsma sat eye-to-eye with a woman whose son was in a hospital intensive care unit.
Guilt, raw and ugly, ate at her. Her son, who was epileptic, had apparently suffered a seizure before falling into the family pool. He had been resuscitated by the first aid squad, but now doctors said he was brain dead.
Reitsma had come to the ICU with an important question: Would the boy's mother consent to donating his organs? Would she allow surgeons to remove her son's heart, liver and kidneys to be transplanted in others?
She'd refused earlier when an ICU doctor had asked, he knew. Now she repeatedly told Reitsma, "I'm an awful mother." But, she added, "I know there's another mother out there who wants something good to happen."
Bill Reitsma of the New Jersey Sharing Network, which helps arrange organ transplants, next to a quilt showing donors' faces. He has advocated for organ donation for more than three decades.
Guilt, raw and ugly, ate at her. Her son, who was epileptic, had apparently suffered a seizure before falling into the family pool. He had been resuscitated by the first aid squad, but now doctors said he was brain dead.
Reitsma had come to the ICU with an important question: Would the boy's mother consent to donating his organs? Would she allow surgeons to remove her son's heart, liver and kidneys to be transplanted in others?
She'd refused earlier when an ICU doctor had asked, he knew. Now she repeatedly told Reitsma, "I'm an awful mother." But, she added, "I know there's another mother out there who wants something good to happen."
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