Father of organ donor unearths stories of new life

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Father of organ donor unearths stories of new life

By Daniel Horgan, Special for USA TODAY

Thirteen years ago, the story of 7-year-old Nicholas Green and his gift of life made headlines around the world.

Nicholas and his sister, Eleanor, were traveling with their parents, Reg and Maggie Green, in Calabria, Italy, in September 1994 when would-be robbers mistook their vehicle for a jewelry delivery car and fired on it. The rest of the family were uninjured, but Nicholas was severely wounded.

After the boy was declared brain-dead, Green, a British journalist, and his wife announced they would donate Nicholas' organs and corneas to Italians who needed them.

That decision triggered an outpouring of emotion and publicity in Italy, where organ donation rates, which had been abysmally low, soared and made the Greens famous. A TV movie, Nicholas' Gift, was made. The experience, detailed in Green's book The Nicholas Effect, marked the beginning of his crusade to persuade others to donate, one that has brought the 78-year-old former Times of London correspondent face-to-face with desperately ill patients, their families, doctors and transplant advocates around the world.

True stories

Out of these encounters comes a new book by Green, The Gift That Heals. The book tells 42 stories of people at various stages of the transplant process.

Many hopeful recipients "are very close to death," Green says. "They carry pagers. They're waiting for that phone call to come every day."

That call can bring amazing transformations.

The Gift That Heals tells the story of Sgt. Harold Urick of Cleveland. He was blinded in 1944 by a German mine. In 1992, donated corneas allowed the veteran to see his children and grandchildren for the first time in 48 years.

The book also profiles Chris Klug of Aspen, Colo. At 22, the champion snowboarder got a flu that would not go away. Cholangitis, a disease that scars the bile ducts, was attacking his body. Soon, the athlete found himself weak and exhausted after training and needing sleep the rest of the day.

In 2000, six years after going on the transplant waiting list, Klug got the call: A new liver was waiting for him. Weeks after the transplant, Klug, strong again, resumed training. He won a World Cup race six months later and then the bronze medal at the 2002 Olympics.

Green, who lives in La Canada, Calif., says he has flown 50,000 miles in the past year, talking to doctors, teachers and even a coroners' conference in his push to get families and medical professionals to "have that conversation" about organ donation before an emergency hits.

Some families aren't prepared to decide or even discuss the subject when the time comes.

"Generally … they arrive at the hospital, and someone they love who was in perfect health the last time they saw them, just maybe a few hours ago, is now dead or dying," Green says. "And they're suddenly asked to make a major, irrevocable decision about something they never thought of before."

And Green says some families have a deeply rooted aversion to "tampering with the body … more blood, more cutting. It frightens people."

He recalls the case of a nurse whose mother died after a long illness. "And she said to her father, 'Well, shouldn't we donate the organs?' And he said, 'Don't you think your mother has suffered enough?' "

'Did one little body do this?'

Three months after his son's death, a charitable organization asked him and Maggie to return to Italy to meet the recipients of Nicholas' organs and tissue. He recalls how "a mass of humanity" — the recipients and their loved ones — poured into the room.

"I thought, 'Did one little body do this?' And he did. He transformed the lives of all those people there," Green says. "And not only them and their parents who were there, but the aunts and uncles, and the grandmothers and grandfathers who would have been devastated, and the people they'll meet in life who they never would have, the people they'll marry, the children they'll have.

"That again was a kind of revelation, that you have that power in your hand at that moment to do so much."

For more information on organ donation, visit www.nicholasgreen.org or www.unos.org.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-01-21-organ-donation-nicholas_N.htm?csp=34