Organ donors lauded as superstars

Those touched by selfless gift share stories for Donate Life Month

ROARING SPRING -- Jessica White, a medical staff coordinator at Conemaugh Nason Medical Center, understands the importance of being an organ donor from personal experience with friends and family.

Within a three-month period in 2009, her aunt, Barbara Bucher, and her mother, Peggy Bucher Mattern, were on opposite sides of the organ donor process. Her friend, Jaime Henderson, is also a living kidney donor.

After experiencing liver failure and being diagnosed with primary biliary cirrhosis, a rare autoimmune disease that causes progressive destruction of the bile ducts, White's aunt received a new liver and is still alive thanks to a 36-year-old woman in New Jersey, who died on an operating table while having surgery, she said.

On June 1, 2009, White was in Ohio when her mother fell, her head hitting a concrete sidewalk in front of her house, and had to be taken to a hospital by ambulance.

A police officer, who was a friend of the family, called White and informed her of the accident. The officer later called her again to say the situation was much worse than he thought and suggested that she should make arrangements to return home to Altoona as soon as possible.

White drove nearly four hours home to discover her mother was on life support.

Doctors and nurses discovered her mother had broken her orbital bones, and an MRI showed blood was pooling in the base of her brain. According to White, her mother's spinal column had separated from her brain stem, and there was no brain activity.

"We said our goodbyes to my mom and begged to have her removed from life support," she said, adding since her mom was an organ donor, doctors convinced the family to keep her on life support for an extra day before declaring her brain dead.

The Center for Organ Recovery and Education, known as CORE, found recipients for her lungs, skin and corneas, White said.

"We told them to take what they could to save somebody else," she said, adding her mother's lungs gave a woman a few extra years of life before she died.

Nearly moved to tears on Tuesday, White told a crowd of people gathered in the hospital's board room that "organ donation is a wonderful gift" after she publicly shared her family's story for the first time.

Conemaugh Health System, in collaboration with CORE, raises a flag in honor of Donate Life Month in April every year. Jessica Yokubeak, CORE's director of operations, said the theme for this year's national Donate Life Month -- "Donors are Superstars" -- was inspired by the shining stars of the night sky.

"Stars remind us that even on the darkest nights there is light," she said, adding a donor's generosity becomes a "beacon of hope" to the 100,000 people awaiting a second chance at life on the national transplant waiting list.

"It's a reminder that even in the vastness of the universe, our collective efforts in organ and tissue donation create a constellation of hope, echoing the resilience and interconnectedness of the stars above," Yokubeak said.

Conemaugh flight nurse Jill Dillman-Stull said she received a cornea transplant more than 10 years ago in Pittsburgh. She said, had it not been for her donor, her life would have changed dramatically.

Dillman-Stull said she doesn't know who her donor was, so she thanks everybody she meets who says they're an organ donor.

"You never know when you're going to need someone to be unselfish," she said.

Tim Harclerode, CEO of Conemaugh Nason Medical Center, encouraged people to "talk to anybody you can every time you can" about becoming an organ donor.

Harclerode said the stories shared at the flag-raising ceremony "hit home" every year for those who are impacted. He said getting people to sign up to become a donor is a year-round effort.

"It is something that we need to make part of our daily interactions because you don't want to not have that discussion when it actually impacts you personally," he said.

Mirror Staff Writer Matt Churella is at 814-946-7520.