Sandy fails to thwart Philadelphia-area organ transplants

Philadelphia Inquirer | Don Sapatkin
Photo: Heart-transplant recipient Jack Vaughn before surgery, with his wife, Nancy

Francis Barnes got the call on his cellphone - power was already out - at 10:16 p.m., with Hurricane Sandy at its peak. His 16-month wait for a new liver was over. All he had to do was get to the hospital in West Philadelphia from his home on a gravel cul-de-sac in rural Upper Bucks County.

"I said, sure," he said. "My adrenaline was pumping."

Barnes soon got stopped by a tree too big to move, and turned around. Another tree; he backed up. A third, then a fourth. He dialed transplant coordinator Nicole Platt.

"He said, 'There are five ways out of my neighborhood,' " she said. " 'I'm going to try the fifth way and I'll call you back.' The next call I got from him" - he had found a sixth route - "was 'Yeah, yeah, I got to 611.' "

A few hours earlier, Platt had helped arrange a rescue company transport for a heart-transplant patient in Easton, Pa., to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Four days later, with transport still shaky at the Jersey Shore, a coordinator at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center managed to get a patient from Pleasantville to Camden for a kidney.
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