Fulfilling 'a need to know'
The Courier | Joy Brown
A year passed before Jim Ford resolved to solve the mystery.
When he received his double-lung transplant in August 2009, whose lungs did he receive? And from where? How did the donor die? What type of person was he?
His questions led to what organ procurement specialists say doesn't always happen, a face-to-face meeting with the donor's family.
After his grueling surgery, physicians from the Cleveland Clinic only told Ford that his new lungs were from a younger man. Hospital social workers told him to wait a year before trying to find out more, to allow the donor family time to grieve and Ford to adjust.
Ford, 63, of Findlay, information technology manager for Findlay Publishing Co., at first wasn't sure he wanted to know the specifics of how his life was saved.
It was enough that he had survived nonspecific interstitial pneumonitis, a non-cancerous but potentially fatal lung disease that medications failed to control.
Physically and psychologically, he had to grapple with the fact that his life had drastically changed forever. Medical intervention, although technologically advanced, did not result in a cure.
Transplant patients must, to varying degrees, constantly battle organ rejection, and anti-rejection medications can have debilitating side effects.
Plus, Ford can never again eat some of his favorite foods or resume some hobbies that he once enjoyed.
Then there was the fundamental reason why he stayed alive, and the accompanying guilt.
"You have to get over the fact that someone had to die to help you live," said Dr. Marie Budev, medical director for the Cleveland Clinic Lung Transplantation and Heart-Lung Transplantation Program.
Read more
{Register to be an organ,eye and tissue donor. To learn how, www.donatelife.net or www.organdonor.gov}
A year passed before Jim Ford resolved to solve the mystery.
When he received his double-lung transplant in August 2009, whose lungs did he receive? And from where? How did the donor die? What type of person was he?
His questions led to what organ procurement specialists say doesn't always happen, a face-to-face meeting with the donor's family.
After his grueling surgery, physicians from the Cleveland Clinic only told Ford that his new lungs were from a younger man. Hospital social workers told him to wait a year before trying to find out more, to allow the donor family time to grieve and Ford to adjust.
Ford, 63, of Findlay, information technology manager for Findlay Publishing Co., at first wasn't sure he wanted to know the specifics of how his life was saved.
It was enough that he had survived nonspecific interstitial pneumonitis, a non-cancerous but potentially fatal lung disease that medications failed to control.
Physically and psychologically, he had to grapple with the fact that his life had drastically changed forever. Medical intervention, although technologically advanced, did not result in a cure.
Transplant patients must, to varying degrees, constantly battle organ rejection, and anti-rejection medications can have debilitating side effects.
Plus, Ford can never again eat some of his favorite foods or resume some hobbies that he once enjoyed.
Then there was the fundamental reason why he stayed alive, and the accompanying guilt.
"You have to get over the fact that someone had to die to help you live," said Dr. Marie Budev, medical director for the Cleveland Clinic Lung Transplantation and Heart-Lung Transplantation Program.
Read more
{Register to be an organ,eye and tissue donor. To learn how, www.donatelife.net or www.organdonor.gov}
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