Organ Donation: Why My Heart's Not In It Anymore

by Kathleen Larimer

On October 5, 2001 my husband and I lost our 18-year-old son to brain death after a car accident. His name was Tom, and we consented to donate his organs and tissues.

Having carried the special organ donor symbol on our own driver's licenses for many years, my husband and I thought we understood what we were consenting to.

But then 13 days later, on the morning of October 18th, we got a phone call from the organ procurement coordinator informing us that they had been unable to recover any or our son's organs or tissues, and the explanation we were given for this outcome was that although they got him to the operating room, his heart stopped on the table before they even made an incision.

This was when and how my husband and I began to realize that brain death is not true death, and just when we thought our hearts couldn't be anymore broken, they were.

I have since written a book about our experience titled: "Organ Donation: Why My Heart's Not In It Anymore" which is available free on-line through Delphi Forums (Link to the book).

I chose to put my book in the format of a forum to not only make it accessible to as many people as possible, but to also provide a place for reader comments, questions, and to just generally encourage the kind of free-flowing discussion about brain death and organ donation--pro AND con--that I think is long overdue.

Although organ donation is everything those who promote it say it is, there is another side to the story that they never tell, and it is my hope that the information and insight contained in my book and forum will help others be more fully informed than my husband and I were, or that it will at least serve as a catalyst for them to look into it more thoroughly on their own.

Sincerely,

Kathleen Cameron Larimer, Author (aka, Forum Host "KATHY_OAK) "Organ Donation: Why My Heart's Not In It Anymore"

https://forums.delphiforums.com/n/nav/start.asp?webtag=OrganDonorStory