The Patient Who Made Me Believe in Organ Donation
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When most people think about organ donation, they think about the recipient whose life may be saved. But the recipient is not the only person changed by donation.
This is the story of a patient I cared for early in my nursing career—before I became an Organ Procurement Coordinator. Through organ donation, she changed the lives of several recipients, gave her family a source of meaning in the middle of devastating loss, and changed the direction of my own life.
The morning everything changed
I admitted her at the beginning of a stretch of ICU shifts. Our Trauma ICU cared for patients with severe neurologic injuries, and I had seen patient's survive devastating injuries before.
My patient had suffered a catastrophic brain hemorrhage. She never woke up.
She was mechanically ventilated, deeply sedated, and surrounded by the lines, tubes, monitors, and medications required for intensive care. A device monitored the mounting pressure inside her skull. Because the skull cannot expand, bleeding and swelling can create dangerous pressure on the brain.
Her family was on their way to the hospital.
Despite the severity of her injury, I was optimistic. Her pressure was holding steady, and I had seen patients beat terrible odds before. There was still hope.
When her family arrived, they were devastated but hopeful. They talked about the person she was, the life she had built, and the future they had expected her to have.
There were also the complicated emotions that so often accompany sudden loss—the things family members wish they had said, conversations they thought there would always be time to have, and plans they assumed they would have more time to make.
They prayed, talked, cried, and played soft music while myself and our team did everything medically possible.
The second morning
I hurried into work the next day hoping she had improved. Her condition had not changed. Her family had reluctantly left the bedside for a short time to eat, shower, and try to sleep.
For a period of time, the pressure inside her skull remained high but relatively stable. Her neurologic examination was unchanged.
Then her intracranial pressure suddenly and dramatically doubled to a dangerous level.
I verified the equipment and called for another set of eyes. The reading was real. Despite aggressive treatment, the pressure would not come down. Her brain was swelling despite everything we were doing.
Our team came to the bedside and told the family that she was getting worse. We were still doing everything we could, but it no longer felt like enough.
I joined hands with her family around her bed and we prayed.
But ultimately, despite every effort to save her, she was declared dead by neurologic criteria - she was brain dead.
“How could she be dead but look so alive?”
Brain death can be difficult to understand because a person may not look the way families expect death to look.
My patient appeared much as she had before. The ventilator moved air into her lungs. Her heart was still beating. Her skin was warm and had normal color.
To her family, she looked as though she might simply be asleep. How could she be dead but look so alive?
After brain death was confirmed through the hospital’s required process, we gave the family the news and gave them time to hold her hand and grieve together.
As part of the normal hospital process when death is imminent or has occurred, the Organ Procurement Organization had been notified and was evaluating the potential for donation.
My patient had made the decision during her life to register as an organ donor.
Her family was suddenly being asked to process two realities at once: the person they loved was gone, and her decision to donate might give other people a chance to live.
Only a short time earlier, she had been living an ordinary life—making plans, going about her days, and assuming, as we all do, that she had more time.
Now her family was trying to comprehend an unimaginable loss.
The reaction I did not expect
I could hardly believe their response.
They found a sense of meaning in her decision to donate.
Learning that she had already registered as a donor lifted a tremendous weight from them. They did not have to guess what she would have wanted. She had made the decision herself, and they wanted to honor it.
They began asking about the people she might be able to help. Her family found comfort in knowing that something life-giving might come from a situation none of us had been able to change.
This was one of the worst moments of their lives, yet they were finding a new kind of hope in the possibility of donation.
As I watched the family talk about how she would have wanted to help others, a warm feeling began to fill the places where my sadness had been.
The helplessness I felt because we could not save her slowly gave way to an understanding that her story was not ending without meaning.
Her donation ultimately provided lifesaving organs to multiple recipients.
Her family said a tearful final goodbye as she was taken to the operating room.
Other people went home
Later, I learned more about the people whose lives had been changed by her donation.
People who had been critically ill and waiting for transplants were given another chance at life.
Something good was coming out of this horrible loss.
They could go home—to their families, their jobs, errands, traffic, celebrations, frustrations, and all the wonderfully ordinary things that make up a life.
Their normal lives were possible because of my patient, her decision, and her family’s support.
Until then, I had understood organ donation primarily from the perspective of a critical care nurse.
Now I understood something different.
We had not been able to save my patient.
But that did not mean nothing more could be done.
Why I became an Organ Procurement Coordinator
My patient’s family showed me the most hopeful side of donation.
Their response affected me so deeply that, a few years later, I changed careers and became an Organ Procurement Coordinator.
I wanted to devote my work to helping transform something devastating into the possibility of life for others.
Donation does not erase a tragedy. It does not make losing someone less painful.
But it can allow something meaningful to grow from an unimaginable loss.
When my patient chose “yes” to being an organ donor, she probably never imagined the chain of events that decision would set in motion—for the people who would eventually receive her gifts, for her grieving family, and for a nurse caring for her at the bedside.
She made me a believer in organ donation.
She is also part of the reason CPTCExam.com exists.
Where this story can take you
If you are a healthcare professional wondering whether organ procurement coordination could be your next career, start with the free career-fit quiz.
Explore Organ Donation Careers →
If this story has made you think about your own donation decision, you can register through the official national resource.