Epilogue

Abstract

Like many other families, mine never imagined that it would be touched by the larger historical narrative of lung transplantation. When my brother John was told a transplant was his only hope, the only place in the Midwest that performed them was Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, which is where Joel Cooper had relocated. We were told that if John were accepted as a candidate, he would have to move there. The hospital scheduled an appointment for an evaluation for transplant for mid-January 1991, and the family scrambled to make arrangements. I recall draining phone conversations with John as I tried to ascertain how he was doing both physically and mentally. He didn’t give much indication of how he was feeling. He declined my offer to move to St. Louis with him, but knowing how limited my finances were as a struggling graduate student, he offered to pay for my airfare home for the Christmas holidays. Though touched, I also thought it was a bad sign that he was willing to spend his limited money on me.