New York Organ Donor Network

About six years ago on a Thursday morning around 10 o’clock, I got a phone call from Georgette.  At the time, I was at my office.  She told me that a man we both knew was on life support at one of the local hospitals.  He was in his 60s and had gone in for surgery earlier that morning.  Something went wrong during the surgery, and he had stopped breathing.  The surgical team was able to bring him back to life, but his wife and children were told that he was “brain dead.”  The only thing keeping him alive was a ventilator (a breathing machine).