April is Organ Donation Awareness
Month, and Horn Memorial Hospital is using this opportunity to share the
importance of organ donation. Statistics
received from the Iowa Donor Network shared that every 10 minutes someone is added
to the transplant wait list and an average of 20 people die each day waiting
for a transplant. In 2018 there was 36,500 people in the U.S. who received the
gift of life through organ donation.
Just one donor can save up to eight lives through organ donation and
heal more than 200 lives through tissue donation. If you haven’t shared your wishes with your
family members or checked yes as an “organ donor” when renewing your driver's license, now is the time!
Horn has reached out to
several people from our communities who have been recipients of organ donation
and they were honored to help us spread the importance of this “gift of life”. Jeanette (Paulson) Wulf of Odebolt graciously
shared her organ donation story with us…
“Jeanette, are you ready
for your liver transplant?!” the nurse said on the phone. After a year and a half of waiting on the
transplant list and two false alarms later I received the phone call everyone
waits for. My second chance at
life! When you get the phone call it’s
not really like you’re waiting by the phone for it with your suitcase packed. You are just trying to live your life, with a
failing liver and health hoping that the phone call comes but not knowing when. That is exactly what I was doing when the
phone call came…living and hoping the best I could with failing health.
I had just finished my
freshman year at Wayne State College and turned 21 a few weeks before the
fateful phone call. It was a warm summer
day on June 9th 2001. My
sister Joann and I left Odebolt early that morning to spend a day shopping in
Sioux City to prepare our small wardrobe for the summer quickly
approaching. I was buying trident gum in
Target (back when Target use to be in the mall where JC Penny now resides). The
cashier just slid the gum over the scanner when it happened. I heard the loud beeping
and buzzing of my pager in my purse. Not
sure if it would be a false alarm or the real thing, I called the number that
appeared on my pager using my very first cell phone that I had recently got for
this exact reason. The nurse on the line
was waiting for my call and didn’t even say hello but joyfully asked if I was
ready for a liver transplant! It was not
a false alarm. Caught so off guard and
busy shopping I didn’t know quite how to answer but told her I that I guess I was. We managed to get a plan of action
established over the phone and before I knew it our shopping trip was over and Joann
and I were briskly walking through the mall, our thoughts racing. We were told to go straight to Omaha to the
University of Nebraska Medical Center and check in. There I would wait for 8 additional hours
before my liver arrived at the hospital.
Through the course of events, I did happen to find out that my liver
came from a 22-year-old male. To this day that is all I know of my hero who
saved my life. At 5am on Sunday, June
10, 2001 the nurses came to get me and before I knew it, I was being whisked
away to a major surgery that would completely change my life.
Six years earlier, I was
diagnosed with a rare liver disease called Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis
(PSC), I was 15 years old. I managed my
care at Horn Memorial Hospital who worked well with my team at the University
of Nebraska Medical Center. For six
years I would have an ERCP about every three months to balloon my bile ducts
open so they could function better and to relieve some of my symptoms. My worse symptoms were chronic fatigue,
constant itching, sores all over my skin, and very irregular and high liver
functions. After each ERCP I would get
pancreatitis and spend a week in the hospital.
I bounced in and out of the hospital in which Horn always played a key
role. The staff at Horn was always so
good with my rare problems and so kind in treating me. I began relationships then that I cherish and
still have to this day with many new ones.
I feel well taken care of there and enjoy familiar faces there who know
me. The night before my transplant was a
restless awful sleep as I did not feel well and remember itching the worst I
had ever itched before. I remember
thinking that it was maybe time for another ERCP since I was feeling so
bad. Little did I know then that would
be the last night before the fateful happenings the next day that changed my
life and another’s. The next morning as
I prepared for a day of shopping, something terrible happened to someone who
would become my hero.
My transplant surgery
lasted eight hours and I received over 22 units of blood through the course of
the tedious surgery. I awoke in the ICU
to a room filled with windows and the warm summer sun shining in on me. Warm thoughts of thankfulness instantly
flooded my thoughts…I made it! Those first
few hours I remained so thankful and drank in the warm rays of sun that I just
knew the Lord shined in for me. It
wasn’t long when the thoughts of guilt and a sadness came. As I was celebrating little things like my
eyes no longer being yellow and the liver spots all over my skin disappearing,
I knew another family was grieving and making preparations for a funeral. It was such a bittersweet time.
I knew I had to thank
this family. Every year at Christmas I
wrote them a letter letting them know how I was and how thankful I was for
their decision. But how do you truly
thank someone who gives you such a gift?
Thanking them in letters was nice but living my life to try to be the
best I can everyday and be a good person was more than saying thank you but
honoring my donor, who is my hero, and their decision. Because of them and their decision to say yes
to organ donation I am alive! I have
been able to live a full wonderful life.
I went on and graduated from Wayne State College in 2003 with honors. I got married shortly after on Valentine’s
Day and we have been happily married for 15 years. We live on a farm and manage a small farming
operation. I got pregnant in 2008 and
had a baby full term which is a big deal for transplant women. He is a healthy 10-year-old now and the
‘SONshine’ of our lives. We live happy,
love each other and love to laugh. We
remain thankful for what we have. There
was a time in my life when all this was very questionable and because of the
decision to say yes to organ donation I have been able to go on and live a
wonderful life!
When I was a kid, I
remember hearing about organ donation.
It sparked an interest in me that they could actually transplant
organs. I came home to ask my mom about
it and that I would like to donate if something would ever happen to me. She said that it was ok with her but I needed
to talk to my Dad. So, when Dad got
home, I came with my exciting news. Only
to have him tell me, “Absolutely not, no one is going to take my little girls’
organs.” I could not convince him and my
hopes were dashed. Who knew that years
later organ donation would in fact end up saving his little girls life? His views on this matter changed immediately
and he is to this day an organ donor.
Sometimes the hard and serious circumstances
in life make you exactly who you are. It
isn’t fun or easy to go through them but it is how you handle them that defines
you. I often think of the jolly nurse that asked me if I was ready for my
transplant all those years ago and the sunshine in my room the day I woke up on
June 10, 2001 to my second chance at life.
If someone asks you to be an
organ donor will you be ready to answer? I encourage you to think about it and to say
yes. Talk to your family about your
wishes and remember my story. I hope it
helps you in your decision. Organ
donation works and saves lives, it saved mine and I will live forever grateful.
