Opinion: My son’s tragedy turns to hope for others

Opinion: My son’s tragedy turns to hope for others

BY MICHAEL CURRAN, EDMONTON JOURNAL SEPTEMBER 26, 2013

Emerson Curran was injured at a house party in Yellowknife and flown to Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton for treatment. He died on Aug. 25 and his organs were donated. His father, Michael, hopes his story can persuade other Canadians to register as organ donors.
Photograph by: Jillian Gummo , supplied
One month ago, my wife was awakened by a nightmarish phone call. It was just before 4 a.m. in Ottawa.

A doctor from Yellowknife delivered devastating news that shattered our lives. Our 20-year-old son Emerson was badly beaten at a house party and was in a coma.

My wife screamed for me to come to the downstairs speaker phone, away from our three sleeping children. I listened to the doctor speak as an incredible feeling of dread descended. I did my best to fight off an overpowering urge to vomit.

“I think you should immediately get a flight,” he told us.

Less than two hours later, my wife and I arrived at Ottawa International Airport. Just before check-in, our cellphone rang with an update from the hospital. “Your son’s brain is bleeding badly. We’re going to medevac him to the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton. Head there.”

Cut off from any communication, the flight to Edmonton was an eternity. My wife and I held each other tightly as tears streamed down our face. I ran scenarios through my brain, ranging from optimistic to lost hope.

After arriving at the Royal Alex, we made our way to ICU and were escorted into a small, dimly lit room. I don’t recall the exact words the doctor spoke, but I’m fairly certain we got our desperate update in his third sentence. “Emerson is gone,” he said, his words unleashing a torrent of emotions.

The doctor told us a test had to be done to determine if any blood was still circulating to Emerson’s brain. In the meantime, he was on life support and we could visit him.

The last time my wife and I saw Emerson was Mother’s Day weekend. We gathered with his four grandparents, his two brothers and sister and his girlfriend for a backyard barbecue. It was a joint Mother’s Day tribute and Emerson’s Yellowknife send-off.

Emerson had just finished his second year in philosophy at the University of Ottawa and worked part time at a local fresh produce and meats grocery.

In late April, unsure of his career aspirations, he pitched an idea to work for the summer with his cousin in Yellowknife as a dock hand at an airplane float base on Great Slave Lake.

To my wife and me, the idea had instant appeal. It would fill Emerson’s desperate desire for independence, an adventure with an expiry date that would see him return to university in the fall. And it gave him a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience the North. One phone interview later, he had a summer job.

Back in Edmonton ICU on Aug. 24, the unimaginable news that Emerson would not recover from his massive brain injury settled into our consciousness. Mid-afternoon, my wife and I spoke again with the doctor.

Summoning incredible courage, my wife said, “Emerson talked to me about organ donation.” The doctor looked somewhat surprised and responded, “I was going to raise that with you. Thank you for bringing this up. We can speak later about it.”

Later that day, we decided my wife would fly home to be with our children as they awoke on Sunday morning. We would soon need to share the inevitable news. One of us had to be home with our children. I would stay in Edmonton and await the official results of Emerson’s brain test.

I didn’t sleep much that night in ICU. The desperately awaited test was delayed. Finally, in the early afternoon of Aug. 25, Emerson was wheeled back into his room on a gurney and the doctor approached me with a grim look. “The test was conclusive. There is no blood flow to his brain,” he said, letting that news settle in for a few minutes. “Are you still in favour of organ donation?” I nodded.

One hour later, a kind nurse named Karen arrived from HOPE, Alberta’s organ procurement and donation group. She sat bedside in Emerson’s hospital room and asked me questions about my officially brain-dead son.

“Tell me about him,” she said with genuine interest. I told some stories and we shared some tears. She proceeded to explain, in great detail but also with simplicity, the organ donation options. After little discussion, I signed the necessary forms.

What happened next gave me great solace.

The organ donation nurse parked herself outside of the hospital room and began the long task of finding recipients. This entailed countless phone conversations that, to my memory, started sometime around 5 p.m. and stretched throughout the night and early morning.

Looking for some form of distraction, I would regularly ask Karen for updates. She seemed only too happy to share the latest. Here I was, thousands of miles from home, reeling from Emerson’s death and this nurse was working miracles 20 feet from his bed.

In a time of absolute despair, this was a glimmer of hope.

Emerson made his organ donation wishes known to my wife during a long drive one day. Drawing on his philosophy studies, he shared his perspective on life and the afterlife. He believed that once life was extinguished, his bodily remains should be used to help others. There was no doubt in his mind, my wife said.

Back in Edmonton, I grappled with the realization that my time with Emerson was quickly coming to an end. He was still on life support, but organ donation surgery would need to occur within hours. I held his hand. I washed his face. I placed my hand on his beating heart. I prayed.

When the time came for my last farewell, I can tell you the knowledge that he was going into organ donation surgery gave me great strength. I whispered to him how much he was loved by his mother, by his brothers and sister.

I told him that his final act in life was incredible and inspiring. And then I turned my back and walked out of his hospital room, pausing for one last glimpse of my son.

Thanks to HOPE, his heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, pancreas and tissues found new homes in unknown people awaiting transplants.

I’m sharing this painful story with you in the hopes it might persuade others, especially young people like Emerson, to become registered donors.

I also believe there are thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of Albertans who are willing to donate and have not registered.

My wife and I hope that political leaders and health-care administrators work diligently to ensure that registering for organ donation is a simple and straightforward.

I also realize that support of front-line hospital staff, the doctors and nurses, is imperative to maximize organ donation. It takes training, courage and compassion for hospital staff to raise the issue with grieving families. That is not easy.

Emerson’s story is only half the story. There is another part of it that I do not know. It’s the story of 4,000 patients in Canada desperately waiting for donations that could miraculously save, or radically improve, their lives.

Life is precious. I think Emerson wanted to do everything he could to preserve it.

I hope you will, too.

Michael Curran is publisher of the Ottawa Business Journal.

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/health/Opinion+tragedy+turns+hope+others/8954298/story.html