April 2007 | Art & Soul
My Donor’s Name is Danne
By Janis Amatuzio, MD
The long-awaited phone call from the transplant coordinator had come last evening. “We have a match! We have both a kidney and a pancreas for your husband. Please come to the hospital right away.” Mike jumped at the opportunity and began the rigorous testing and preparation for the transplant.
Mike had been diagnosed with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus as a child. Now he was thirty-two years old with a wife and three children. He had carefully controlled his blood sugars over the years with multiple daily insulin injections. However, despite his attention, the disease continued to take its toll on his kidneys, blood vessels, eyes and nerves. Mike’s physician, Dr. Harry Laughton, a well-known endocrinologist, had urged Mike to consider a pancreas and kidney transplant, although at that time this was still considered an experimental treatment. Only three others had been performed at Latter Day Saints Hospital in Salt Lake City by that time, the spring of 1994.
Mike had been in surgery for over six hours when one of the aides notified his wife, Kim, that the procedure had gone well, and the surgical team was closing. Shortly thereafter, the chief surgeon walked in, a smile on his face. “We’re not out of the woods yet, but now he has a chance at a full life.”
Kim walked through the doors and tears welled up in her eyes as she saw her husband. An aide put a chair next to the bed and pulled the curtains partway to give them some privacy. Kim leaned forward and kissed her husband lightly on the cheek, her hand cupped gently over his.
“Kim.” He whispered hoarsely. She bent closer to him. “Kim,” he said, “my donor’s name is Danne.” He smiled faintly and closed his eyes again.
Thirty-six hours earlier, in New Brighton, Minnesota, Patti Harvey had been awakened from sleep at 3:30 a.m. by the insistent ring of her phone. She sat up in bed and in the instant before she picked it up, she knew it concerned her oldest son.
“Is this Danne Lynch’s mother?” the voice on the line asked.
“Yes, it is. This is Patti Harvey.”
“This is Dr. Adams from Latter Day Saints Emergency Room in Salt Lake City. Ma’am, your son was severely injured in a car accident this evening,” he informed her.
The hours after Dr. Adams’s phone call passed in a blur for Patti. Friends and family gathered upon hearing the news. Northwest Airlines even held a flight for them, and the family was taken out to board the plane on the runway. When Patti arrived at the hospital in Salt Lake City and saw her son hooked to tubes and a respirator, she knew in her heart that he would not live, but she had the opportunity to spend time at his side during his last hours, grateful that she was there to still care for him.
She recalled one of their last conversations, several weeks earlier. Danne had just renewed his driver’s license and informed her that he had chosen to be an organ donor.
Mike recovered steadily, although he had to spend the next few days in the intensive care unit, followed by several weeks on the transplant floor where he was monitored for signs of infection or organ rejection.
Several days after the surgery found Kim sitting and reading in his room. She looked at him and quietly said, “Mike, you said something to me right after surgery. Do you remember?”
“How could I forget?” he answered. “I said ‘My donor’s name is Danne.’”
“How do you know that?” she asked.
“Well, it was the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me.”
“Tell me.”
“You know, someone died so I can live. That’s giving the ultimate gift.” And his eyes welled up with tears. “Something happened to me in there. Something happened during surgery. At some point I realized I could hear all of the conversations in the operating room, and then I could see what was happening to me from up above. I saw the organs brought into the O.R. after mine had been removed. They were in a blue container and packed in ice. At that moment, I felt such an extraordinary wave of love and gratitude. It was so intimate, so profound, that I said, ‘I want to see my donor.’
“In the next instant, I just seemed to pass through a wall. Just like that! And then I saw him; he was lying there. He was a real good-looking man, with long, sandy hair, and he looked about my age. The next thing that happened to me — well, again, it’s hard to explain.”
Mike paused as if struggling for words. “I was just sucked up into the light. You know, Kim, it was like a giant vacuum cleaner,” he said with a smile. “I felt myself suddenly, abruptly lifted up by this incredible force, this light, and I heard the words, ‘Danne died and you are going to live.’ I saw three luminous beings. One of them I recognized as my aunt. She was wearing the scarf I’d given her before she died. Next to her was Danne, and the other being, well, he was so familiar, someone who had known me all my life, but I just couldn’t figure out who he was. I felt such love, such passion, and such joy. Kim, there just aren’t words. There aren’t words for it.” He paused. “But you know, I’m different now. I know who I am, and I will forever know that I was in a sacred, familiar place.”
The tears that had begun flowing when he started to tell his story had wet his face and the sheets. “I’m overwhelmed. I have Danne’s kidney and pancreas. I am part of Danne’s life, and he is part of mine.”
Excerpted from Beyond Knowing: Mysteries and Messages of Death and Life from a Forensic Pathologist. © 2006 by Dr. Janis Amatuzio. Reprinted with permission of New World Library, Novato, Calif. Available at independent bookstores, foreverours.com and newworldlibrary.com
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