The Patient Who Made Me Believe in Organ Donation

For patient and family privacy, identifying details have been limited. I refer to my patient only as “she” or “her.”

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. She changed five recipients’ lives, 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 three-day stretch of twelve-hour ICU shifts. Our unit cared primarily for patients with severe neurologic injuries and performed many lifesaving neurosurgical procedures.

She was a beautiful woman in her early forties, with long blonde hair and porcelain skin. That morning, she had been talking on the phone at work when a brain aneurysm ruptured. She never woke up.

A ruptured aneurysm occurs when a weakened area in a blood vessel breaks and bleeds into or around the brain. Many people never know an aneurysm is present until the moment it ruptures.

My patient 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 mother, father, and sister were traveling from out of state. Despite the severity of the injury, I was optimistic. Her pressure was holding steady, and I had seen patients beat terrible odds before. There was still hope.

Her parents arrived devastated but hopeful. Her mother told me that her daughter had wanted to marry and have children. Her father told me she was his “Daddy’s girl” and that they had plans to see each other the following month.

Her sister arrived carrying a different kind of pain. The two had argued and had not spoken in almost a year. Neither had made the call to apologize. Now her sister sat beside the bed, overwhelmed by the possibility that she might never have another chance.

The family prayed, talked, cried, and played soft music while 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 to eat, shower, and try to sleep.

During my morning assessment, I kept sensing someone in the doorway. I never clearly saw anyone, but the feeling was so persistent that I repeatedly looked up, expecting a colleague or a phone call. No one was there. It felt like the moment just before someone taps you on the shoulder.

Finally, annoyed at feeling interrupted, I said aloud, “Can you leave me alone? I have work to do.” Just like that, the feeling disappeared.

For the next two hourly checks, the pressure inside her skull remained high but stable. Her neurologic examination was unchanged. Then, on the following check, the pressure suddenly doubled.

I verified the equipment and called for another set of eyes. The reading was real. Her sedation was already profound, her blood pressure was within the target range, and draining cerebrospinal fluid did not bring the pressure 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. We joined hands around her bed and prayed.

By the next morning, she had been declared dead by neurologic criteria.

“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 the day 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 stepped out so they could hold her hand and grieve together.

The hospital had notified the local Organ Procurement Organization, as hospitals are required to do when a patient dies or death is imminent. The OPO had already been following the case and came to the hospital.

My patient had registered as an organ donor. Her organs appeared healthy enough for donation, and the OPO team began the process of speaking with her family and evaluating the opportunity to donate.

Only a few days earlier, she had been living a normal life—working, making plans, sitting in traffic, paying bills, and assuming she had years ahead of her. Now her family was being asked to understand that she was dead and to consider how donation could save people they had never met.

They were devastated. Her father was angry. Her sister carried the pain of words left unsaid. Why should they care about anyone else at the worst moment of their lives?

The reaction I did not expect

I could hardly believe their response.

They felt relieved to find meaning in her death, and they embraced the opportunity 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 asked how many people she might help and whether they might someday meet a recipient. Later, her mother told me she hoped to hear her daughter’s heartbeat again in someone else.

This was the worst day of her life, yet she was 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 heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys were allocated to recipients. She would save five lives. Her family said a tearful final goodbye as she was taken to the operating room.

Five people went home

A few weeks later, an Organ Procurement Coordinator who had worked on the case stopped me during rounds. She asked whether I had been the bedside nurse and showed me a video from the local news.

The video followed a critically ill man waiting in another hospital for a heart transplant. He and his family sat by the phone, hoping to learn whether he would receive my patient’s heart. When the call came, he burst into tears and laughter and embraced his wife and children.

The news footage showed the recovered organs being transported to the hospitals where recipients were waiting. It later showed the heart recipient recovering, leaving the hospital, returning to work, and celebrating with his family.

Five people were going home—to their jobs, their families, rush-hour traffic, errands, and ordinary routines. Their normal lives were possible because of my patient, her decision, and her family’s support.

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, but it can allow something meaningful to grow from it.

When my patient chose “yes” to being an organ donor, she probably never imagined the chain of events she would set in motion for five recipients, for her grieving family, and for a stranger who happened to be her nurse.

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, explore the Organ Donation Careers page and take the free career-fit quiz.

If this story has made you think about your own donation decision, learn how to register through Organdonor.gov.