Getting “The Call”

Abstract

After years of suffering with debilitating lung disease, facing death, undergoing a strenuous evaluation, and surviving the ordeal of waiting, the moment when someone got word it was time for transplant was bound to be dramatic and memorable. “Let’s face it,” said Scott Collien, “It’s not every day someone rings up and says they’ve got a set of lungs for you.” Years later Lori Hughes still pictured the exact setting when she got the call. “My husband and I were sitting, and we had just finished dinner. Dinner of pork chops and hash browns. I’ll remember that forever.” As Karen Couture put it, “The call is always in capital letters: THE CALL.” It was met by an adrenalin rush. Frank Avila was in physical therapy when his coordinator walked in with a “look on her face that said it all.” His excitement was recorded by the pulse oximeter he was hooked up to, which showed an increase in his heart rate. When he called his family, they got excited, too, and Avila “heard screaming and crying from my mom and sisters.”⁴ While excitement was typical, as the quotes at the start of this chapter suggest, there could be a host of other feelings and they might vary dramatically during the few hours before the much-anticipated transplant.

They told my husband—they didn’t tell me—that they were only giving me a week, and if I didn’t have a lung by Friday, then they were going to take me off the list because I was too sick to have one. The next day I just laid around in bed all day; there was just nothing I could do. That night around nine o’clock the phone rang and they said they had a lung for me, get in right off. I was trying to get dressed to go and of course you’d get excited. I was really nervous and I couldn’t breathe and my husband is like, “Come on, come on, we’ve got to go.” It didn’t even dawn on me that I could have died through the surgery or anything like that. I was just excited.¹

—Cheryl Maxham

On Monday, May 6, 1996, the phone rang and it was the transplant coordinator. I was dead silent as she spoke, “Nancy, this is Joan at Sharp and this is your call.” (I am tearing up just writing this to you I can hear her so vividly.) When I hung up the phone I experienced for the very first time, total panic and fear. It lasted less than a minute and then I became totally calm and absolutely ready. Then my husband Mark and I raced around the bedroom trying to figure out what to take. It looked like a Keystone Cops routine. I finally said, “Stop. All I need is a book to read, house shoes, and a robe.”²

—Nancy Hulet

I started to laugh. I could die on the operating table but that didn’t stop my laughter as I looked at myself, knowing it might be the last time I saw my physical form. I stopped laughing and stepped closer to the mirror. I examined my reflection. As I did, I whispered to God, “It’s just You and me now. Thank you for this chance. And please, please bless that child that died and his or her family. Comfort them. Give me the strength, courage, and guidance to do what’s ahead of me. And, if it’s possible, don’t take me yet.”³

—Laura Scott Ferris