For a Pennsylvania Pinoy, a gift of life
By Benjamin Pimentel | INQUIRER.net
CALIFORNIA, United States—One of the toughest stories I ever had to cover involved a father and what he called “the easiest big decision I’ve ever had to make in my life.”
One night in 1994, Reginald and Margaret Green and their two children—7-year-old son, Nicholas, and 4-year-old Eleanor—were driving in Italy when armed and masked robbers in another car started to harass them. Reginald tried to outrun the bandits who then opened fire. The Greens were able to get away—but little Nicholas got hit.
The Bay Area boy was taken to the hospital, but he did not make it. When it was clear that Nicholas would not survive, his parents made a critical decision: They donated his organs.
It immediately had a significant impact in a country which had one of Europe’s lowest rates of organ donation. Nicholas’s heart was given to a 15-year-old boy whose heart problems stunted his growth. His liver went to a 19-year-old Sicilian woman, and his kidneys went to two other children.
"It was the easiest big decision I've ever had to make in my life," Reginald Green told me when I spoke to him by phone from Italy. “There was something magical about Nicholas. We, of course, expected a wonderful future for him. Now that he doesn't have that future, somebody else should have a chance at that kind of future."
Recent news stories about organ donations reminded of the Green’s moving tale.
One involved a Pennsylvania Pinoy who got a new lease on life.
Jesse Gonzales is an old friend. We grew up in the same Cubao neighborhood before he and his family left for the US in the late 1980s. We lost touch for many years, and reconnected this year. By then, he had found out that his kidney was no longer working properly, putting his life in danger.
In a moving twist, a co-worker at the school district where he works as a bus driver—a woman he didn’t really know—stepped forward to help. Bernadette Rodriguez volunteered to give Jesse one of her kidneys.
Jesse was stunned.
“You don’t know me,” was how he first reacted, Jesse told me. “’Why?’ I said. And she said, ‘Why not?’”
“It’s hard to explain the feeling,” Jesse continued. “I didn’t know how to react...She did not hesitate. She did not. For her, it was a spiritual thing and that’s how I want to believe it too.”
Bernadette explained what moved her to help in a story on the WNEP TV station Web site: “I just did what I knew was right to do. I knew I had to do it. I couldn't walk away from it.”
Organ donations are an important part of any health care system. Health authorities in many countries are constantly trying to refine the system of finding and matching donors. New York City recently began a system in which an emergency crew can quickly bring a registered donor who has passed away to a hospital where the deceased person’s kidneys can be recovered.
Many donations involve donors who agree to give their organs when they die. Jesse’s story also shows the importance of living donors, including people who are not related to the recipient.
Sadly, organ donations from living donors have also been abused by those who have little regard for the welfare and lives of others.
This was underscored by the cases of rampant organ sale that landed the Philippines on the list of the top kidney-trafficking countries recently. That prompted the government to impose more restrictions on donations, by banning so-called non-directed, non-related organ donors—that is, donors who are not related to or known by the recipient and are making a donation for selfless motives.
The Philippine Medical Association recently urged the government to revise that policy, which it argued may have gone too far.
“As I speak, there are numerous patients in the country who are fighting for their lives, in a death row-like cue, waiting for this life-saving procedure to be performed on them,” Dr. Oscar Tinio said in a letter to the Department of Health.
There’s a need to protect Filipinos from those who would exploit people’s poverty. But there’s a need for an ethical and humane system that would allow more living donors to help those in need.
To be sure, government policy plays a critical, sometimes life-or-death role, in this matter.
In Arizona, the state government’s sudden decision to stop paying for some transplant operations under the government health care system provoked an outcry. As a New York Times story reported, doctors saw the policy change as tantamount to “a death sentence for some low-income patients, who have little chance of survival without transplants and lack the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to pay for them.”
“I know times are tight and cuts are needed, but you can’t cut human lives,” the wife of a patient who suddenly found himself deprived of government funding for his transplant said in the Times story. “You just can’t do that.”
My friend Jesse’s story affirmed the other perspective—one that nurtured and celebrated human life.
Not only did he find a courageous donor in Bernadette Rodriguez, he found much-needed support from his fellow workers who pitched in to help pay for his medical bills.
“It’s unbelievable,” Jesse told me. “Sunud-sunod. One blessing after another... I was very happy to find people who really cared.”
And he has tried his best to give back, in any way he can. He has helped a colleague whose washer broke down get a new one. He’s been visiting another colleague who recently had a heart operation. He makes it a point to check on how a colleague who is ill is doing.
“I just want to show them that I can be as good as they were to me,” he said. “I’m overwhelmed to this day.”
CALIFORNIA, United States—One of the toughest stories I ever had to cover involved a father and what he called “the easiest big decision I’ve ever had to make in my life.”
One night in 1994, Reginald and Margaret Green and their two children—7-year-old son, Nicholas, and 4-year-old Eleanor—were driving in Italy when armed and masked robbers in another car started to harass them. Reginald tried to outrun the bandits who then opened fire. The Greens were able to get away—but little Nicholas got hit.
The Bay Area boy was taken to the hospital, but he did not make it. When it was clear that Nicholas would not survive, his parents made a critical decision: They donated his organs.
It immediately had a significant impact in a country which had one of Europe’s lowest rates of organ donation. Nicholas’s heart was given to a 15-year-old boy whose heart problems stunted his growth. His liver went to a 19-year-old Sicilian woman, and his kidneys went to two other children.
"It was the easiest big decision I've ever had to make in my life," Reginald Green told me when I spoke to him by phone from Italy. “There was something magical about Nicholas. We, of course, expected a wonderful future for him. Now that he doesn't have that future, somebody else should have a chance at that kind of future."
Recent news stories about organ donations reminded of the Green’s moving tale.
One involved a Pennsylvania Pinoy who got a new lease on life.
Jesse Gonzales is an old friend. We grew up in the same Cubao neighborhood before he and his family left for the US in the late 1980s. We lost touch for many years, and reconnected this year. By then, he had found out that his kidney was no longer working properly, putting his life in danger.
In a moving twist, a co-worker at the school district where he works as a bus driver—a woman he didn’t really know—stepped forward to help. Bernadette Rodriguez volunteered to give Jesse one of her kidneys.
Jesse was stunned.
“You don’t know me,” was how he first reacted, Jesse told me. “’Why?’ I said. And she said, ‘Why not?’”
“It’s hard to explain the feeling,” Jesse continued. “I didn’t know how to react...She did not hesitate. She did not. For her, it was a spiritual thing and that’s how I want to believe it too.”
Bernadette explained what moved her to help in a story on the WNEP TV station Web site: “I just did what I knew was right to do. I knew I had to do it. I couldn't walk away from it.”
Organ donations are an important part of any health care system. Health authorities in many countries are constantly trying to refine the system of finding and matching donors. New York City recently began a system in which an emergency crew can quickly bring a registered donor who has passed away to a hospital where the deceased person’s kidneys can be recovered.
Many donations involve donors who agree to give their organs when they die. Jesse’s story also shows the importance of living donors, including people who are not related to the recipient.
Sadly, organ donations from living donors have also been abused by those who have little regard for the welfare and lives of others.
This was underscored by the cases of rampant organ sale that landed the Philippines on the list of the top kidney-trafficking countries recently. That prompted the government to impose more restrictions on donations, by banning so-called non-directed, non-related organ donors—that is, donors who are not related to or known by the recipient and are making a donation for selfless motives.
The Philippine Medical Association recently urged the government to revise that policy, which it argued may have gone too far.
“As I speak, there are numerous patients in the country who are fighting for their lives, in a death row-like cue, waiting for this life-saving procedure to be performed on them,” Dr. Oscar Tinio said in a letter to the Department of Health.
There’s a need to protect Filipinos from those who would exploit people’s poverty. But there’s a need for an ethical and humane system that would allow more living donors to help those in need.
To be sure, government policy plays a critical, sometimes life-or-death role, in this matter.
In Arizona, the state government’s sudden decision to stop paying for some transplant operations under the government health care system provoked an outcry. As a New York Times story reported, doctors saw the policy change as tantamount to “a death sentence for some low-income patients, who have little chance of survival without transplants and lack the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to pay for them.”
“I know times are tight and cuts are needed, but you can’t cut human lives,” the wife of a patient who suddenly found himself deprived of government funding for his transplant said in the Times story. “You just can’t do that.”
My friend Jesse’s story affirmed the other perspective—one that nurtured and celebrated human life.
Not only did he find a courageous donor in Bernadette Rodriguez, he found much-needed support from his fellow workers who pitched in to help pay for his medical bills.
“It’s unbelievable,” Jesse told me. “Sunud-sunod. One blessing after another... I was very happy to find people who really cared.”
And he has tried his best to give back, in any way he can. He has helped a colleague whose washer broke down get a new one. He’s been visiting another colleague who recently had a heart operation. He makes it a point to check on how a colleague who is ill is doing.
“I just want to show them that I can be as good as they were to me,” he said. “I’m overwhelmed to this day.”
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