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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2016
‘Somebody else’s miracle’
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through organ and tissue donation
Madison Jewell Baird
By NATALIE ST. JOHN
EO Media Group
O
n Valentine’s Day last year , my 20-year-
old cousin, Madison Jewell Baird, gave
her heart to a 13-year-old girl. It had noth-
ing to do with romance, but it was an act of incred-
ible generosity and love.
Madison was hit by a truck on the evening of
Feb. 10 , as she rode her bike on a country road
outside Walla Walla, Washington. Her accident
occurred just 15 days after my stepfather’s brother,
Stanley Morrison, suffered a severe cerebral hem-
orrhage. Both accidents caused brain death. Even
though their bodies were mostly healthy, they had
no chance of recovery.
Stan and Maddy were both registered organ
donors, and over the course of three terrible weeks,
the members of my extended family got a crash
course in the delicate, complex and high-stakes
process of organ donation and placement — and
we discovered that in the midst of tragedy, organ
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and create opportunity for others.
After Stan’s death, I wanted to write a story
about how the process works in Washington state.
A spokeswoman at LifeCenter Northwest, the
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Alaska, Montana, n orthern Idaho and Washington,
encouraged me to interview one of the advocates
who work with donor families.
Before I could set up the interview, Maddy had
her accident. Through a surreal coincidence, I sud-
denly found that I had become a character in my
own news story. When Maddy was declared brain-
dead in a Seattle trauma ward on Feb. 11, the man
I was supposed to interview, grief counselor Jona-
than Merker, was assigned to help our family nav-
igate the donation process.
Vital statistics
LifeCenter Northwest serves
8.3 million people throughout
Alaska, Montana, North
Idaho and Washington,
working collaboratively with
more than 200 hospitals.
Organ donors
142
‘Somebody else’s miracle’
By the following morning, a huge crowd of
Maddy’s supporters from Walla Walla’s tight-knit
Adventist community had taken over the lobby
of the trauma ward. I had spent the long drive to
Seattle mentally preparing to see my cousin on her
deathbed, but I hadn’t given any thought to how it
would feel to see the living. I took one look at all
of those exhausted and heartbroken students, and
her little sister Josie, who was as poised and gra-
cious as ever on the worst day of her life, and burst
into tears.
Maddy’s loved ones crowded around her bed
at nearly all hours. They held her, talked to her,
prayed over her. One afternoon, her friend played
the old country hymn, “Wayfaring Stranger,” and
group of at least 20 people sang to her. That Thurs-
day evening, the Walla Walla choir arrived, and
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“My belief is that she knew on a cellular level
that I was there. She heard my voice and it had to
calm her down. It had to give her peace,” Giebel
said.
Gradually, everyone began to accept that
Maddy was not going to recover. When a nurse
brought up organ donation, Giebel was immedi-
ately supportive, because she knew it was what
Maddy wanted.
“My heart wanted a miracle,” Giebel said.
“... But if not, then it should be somebody else’s
miracle.”
Long odds and high hopes
It is now possible to transplant most major
organs, as well as bone, corneas and skin, and
transplant success rates are steadily improving.
Washington has one of the country’s highest donor
registry participation rates, but the need for organs
is still huge, LifeCenter spokeswoman Cate Oli-
ver said.
Only a tiny percentage of people in the registry
ultimately become donors, because a person gen-
erally has to experience total brain death in a hos-
FREE
PUBLISHED THE FIRST FRIDAY
OF EACH MONTH
January 2015
ess
Chronicling the Joy of Busin
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Taylor remain
NEWS
County makes a splash
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524
383 385
270
127
ABOVE: Madison’s friends
from Walla Walla University
gathered to pray and sing
around her hospital bed on
Feb. 11, 2015. From left, Eli
Wart, Mindy Robinson, Mat-
thew Cosaert (standing), and
Urijah Saenz.
LEFT: On Madison’s final day in
Harborview Hospital, LifeCen-
ter Northwest staff helped her
friends and family place her
handprint on a memorial quilt,
T-shirts and sheets of paper.
pital setting to be eligible, and quality standards for
transplant organs are very high, Oliver said.
Based in Bellevue, LifeCenter is one of 58 fed-
erally-designated “organ procurement organiza-
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organs and tissue, coordinates transplant surger-
ies, supports donor and recipient families during
the process and provides follow-up counseling and
other after care services.
Donors can only stay on life support for a few
days, and most organs can only survive outside of
the body for a few hours. So the moment a hospital
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racing to make a maddeningly complex process
happen within a very short window of opportunity.
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ready for transplant surgery. A team of grief coun-
selors helps the donor’s family and friends through
the donation process. Meanwhile, a team of med-
ical experts evaluates and preserves the donor’s
organs, helps to arrange the transplant surgery, and
transports the organs to the receiving facilities.
There are hundreds of variables, and the pro-
cess is grueling for everyone involved, Oliver
said. And yet, LifeCenter staff coordinated dona-
tions from 200 organ donors in 2015. They esti-
mate that those donations saved 640 lives. They
also coordinated more than 500 tissue donations,
and those gifts have the potential to improve thou-
sands of lives.
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addressed each of our concerns: Had the hospital
done everything possible to save her? Would the
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out if the transplants were successful? Could we
meet the recipients?
As we talked, I noticed that Merker had tears in
his eyes. Later I wondered how anyone could do
his job, and not be harmed by it.
In a recent phone interview, Merker, who now
works at a New Jersey organ procurement organi-
zation called the NJ Sharing Network, said he real-
ized during graduate school that he had a knack
for counseling people confronting death. Volun-
teer work, intensive therapy, and special train-
ing helped him feel at ease serving as a source of
strength and compassion during the worst of times.
“I’ve never once had the same day at my job,
and I have a vast amount of intimate experience
with families,” Merker said. “I don’t know where
HOVH,ZRXOG¿QGWKDWNLQGRIPHDQLQJIXOLQWLPDWH
connection with people, and I love it.”
Merker said was able to feel the powerful sense
of loss surrounding Maddy without losing himself,
because he knows himself extremely well, takes
very good care of his health, and plays whenever
he can.
“There’s a lot of really beautiful and very
raw feelings there. I can experience all that while
simultaneously holding that this is not my loss, this
is not my community,” Merker said.
’10
Up 13.2% from 2014
’11
’12
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Lives saved
624 640
476 462
525 541
Up 2.6% from 2014
’10
’11
’12
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’14
’15
Source: LifeCenter Northwest
Photos by Natalie St. John/
EO Media Group
Alan Kenaga/EO Media Group
and she sleeps on the wind
This little bird
that somebody sends
‘A complicated hope’
In the operating room, LifeCenter staff read a
statement.
“Sometimes the ( surgeons) will stop to bow.
Sometimes they have a tear in their eye. They will
honor the sacredness of what it means to give the
gift of life to another person,” Merker said.
When the surgery is over, staff call the donor’s
family to let them know how it went. They also
follow up periodically, to share news of how their
loved one’s organs were used.
There are no guarantees. Sometimes, doctors
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thought. Sometimes, a transplant doesn’t take.
Some recipients immediately want to start cor-
responding with the donor’s family. Occasionally,
both parties even want to meet, and after careful
preparation, LifeCenter will facilitate a reunion.
But other recipients struggle with intense guilt and
pressure and never feel ready to write.
Both families experience what Merker calls “a
complicated hope.”
One year later, we know that Stanley’s liver
went to a 65-year-old man. His kidneys went to
two recipients who no longer have to undergo dial-
ysis. His heart and lungs went to research, and his
corneas may someday help someone else see.
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The gift of time
On Feb. 11, the preparations for organ recov-
The last goodbye
drank or did drugs, and had no piercings or tattoos,
By the morning of Friday, Feb. 13, recipients and that made it possible for her to donate most
ery began.
In private, doctors put Maddy through a bat- had been lined up. In a few hours, Maddy would of her organs. Her right kidney went to a grandpa
WHU\RIWHVWVWRFRQ¿UPWKDWWKHUHZDVQRDFWLYLW\RI be wheeled into an operating room.
who is able to take long walks with his dog for the
That wait was agonizing, but it was also pre- ¿UVWWLPHLQDJHV+HUOLYHUZHQWWRDIDWKHULQKLV
any kind in her brain, and LifeCenter coordinators
50s who is grateful to be able to lead a more normal
briefed her parents on how the search for matches cious, Giebel said.
As the morning wore on, we each went in to life. Her pancreas went to a married, 30-something
was going.
Grief counselor Jonathan Merker arrived at the VD\D¿QDOJRRGE\H6RPHSHRSOHSUD\HGRWKHUV father of three. Her lungs and left kidney went to
hospital, and stayed there for most of three days. recalled memories, some people said the long-held research, and her bone and soft tissue could even-
tually help many sick and injured people. And as
One afternoon, we watched as Merker presented secret things they wanted her to know.
When my turn came, I rested my head next to far as we know, her heart is still beating in the chest
a memorial quilt to Maddy’s immediate family,
and helped them place her handprints on the quilt. hers and held her hand. It was still warm, and she of a teenage girl, who is thrilled that she was able
Her friends decided they wanted prints, too, and was still beautiful to me, but I understood that it to return to school.
I still struggle to reckon with last year’s trage-
VRRQHYHU\ÀDWVXUIDFHLQWKHURRPZDVFRYHUHGLQ was time.
I shared messages from my sister and cousins dies, but it’s incredible to think that another young
papers bearing Maddy’s handprints.
For Giebel, the opportunity to share her sense who couldn’t be there. I used my last moment with woman’s mother can put her ear to her daughter’s
Maddy to sing an a cappella lullaby I remembered chest, and hear Madison’s vitality creating new
of loss with the others was “priceless”.
hope.
“Choosing ( donation) gave us time to say singing to her when she was a little girl.
“She has touched people’s hearts because she
There’s a little bird
goodbye,” Giebel said.
was a lover of people. She loved people, she loved
somebody sends
‘Really beautiful and very raw feelings’
God. She lived an amazing life,” Giebel said. “That
down to the earth
Merker spends a lot of time educating grieving
was contagious and it was something that we all
to live on the wind
families about organ and tissue donation. In a tiny,
have the ability to do, just by being more loving.”
Born on the wind
in the Columbia-Pacific
Region
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Up 1.5% from 2014
‘Everything was perfect’
On the day of her accident, Maddy was a soph-
omore at Walla Walla University. She was a spir-
ited goofball, a heartbreaker, an avid outdoors
enthusiast and a devout Seventh-d ay Adventist.
She had her father’s quick wit and energy, and her
mother’s kindness and poise.
“I believe in h eaven, so I know that in my belief,
I will see her again,” Maddy’s mother, Lisa Giebel,
said this month . “But this morning, I couldn’t help
remembering that last year at this time, everything
was perfect as far as my kids and life.”
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time in a while, and Madison decided to go for a
bike ride.
After the accident, medics put her on life-sup-
port, and she was air lifted to the trauma critical
care ward at Seattle’s Harborview Hospital.
She never made it home.
163
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