A wonderful story about organ donation.  For information on becoming an organ donor: Donate Life America, www.donatelife.net; 701 East Byrd Street, 16th Floor, Richmond, VA 23219; (804) 337-3580.

 

Mirtala Garcia laid a hand on Sebastiao Lourenco's chest, then pressed her ear there for a moment.

 

"That's my heart," she said. "It's still beating for me."

 

Although she had just met Mr. Lourenco, she had known his heart for a long time. It had belonged to her husband, Julio, who died from a brain hemorrhage in March 2010, at the age of 38. Mrs. Garcia donated her husband's organs, and the family's loss led to a second chance for Mr. Lourenco, 57.

 

But he was not the only one. Seven or eight other people who urgently needed transplants also received organs from Mr. Garcia, an unusually large number. (The average from organ donors is about three.) Even more unusual, his family and a group of recipients met on Wednesday in a highly emotional gathering at the Manhattan headquarters of the New York Organ Donor Network, which coordinated the transplants.

 

The story of the Garcias and the people whose lives were saved by one man's donated organs provides a close look at the charged world of transplants and organ donation, where people on the transplant list know they may die waiting, and the families of brain-dead patients are asked, at perhaps the most painful time in their lives, to look beyond their own grief and allow a loved one's organs to be removed to help strangers.

 

There are nowhere near enough donor organs for all the people who need transplants. Nearly 111,000 are on waiting lists in the United States, but last year, only 28,663 transplants were performed, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees the transplant system nationwide. This year, 6,000 to 7,000 people are expected to die waiting.

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One Death Provides New Life for Many

By DENISE GRADY

Published: May 16, 2011

www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/health/17organ.html