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From the heart Editor, The Harvest
A crisp September day brought friends together for an end-of-summer picnic in Pueblo, Colo. But for Dick and Mary Ruth Coulter of Grace Church, Chanute, it was much more. It was the chance to meet the woman who received their daughter’s heart.
It was a day that Lori Mraovich also had hoped to see — the chance to know the family of the woman who, in death, gave her life.
Heather Coulter was a vibrant young woman of 24, newly-launched in a career working with foster children. She loved her job, had many friends and was diligent in a Christian faith nurtured through years at Grace Church, Chanute and in Diocese of Kansas youth programs. She had just started work on a masters’ degree when, on Sept. 18, 2002, a 17-year-old woman, driving drunk, struck her on a rainy Lawrence street and then fled the scene. Heather suffered massive head trauma and died six days later. Six hundred miles away in Denver, Lori Mraovich also was lying in a hospital bed, facing death without a transplant. Her heart had been severely damaged by radiation therapy for the bone and muscle cancer that struck her at age 9, a cancer so rare she is one of only 37 survivors in the country. She had grown so weak that her vital signs plummeted whenever she had to think hard enough to answer a question. When Heather died, her parents never wavered in honoring her wish to be an organ donor, a decision she proudly announced the day she received her first driver’s license at age 16. People on transplant waiting lists across the Midwest received her heart, lungs, liver and kidney (she only had one, a fact previously unknown). Her pancreas was designated for research, and bone marrow and skin were given to as many patients as possible. The Coulters were just doing what Heather wanted, her mother said. “She said it time and again,” Mary Ruth noted. “‘Where I’m going, I won’t need any of this stuff.’”
Hoping for the day The road to meeting each other wasn’t a quick one. Recipients and donor families have to follow an elaborate process established by the Midwest Transplant Network, the organ procurement organization that oversees transplants in Kansas and western Missouri. They can’t have any contact with each other until a year has passed, and even then they can correspond only with notes that do not reveal their identities. After such an exchange, if both parties agree, they are free to have unrestricted contact. Mraovich said she “had hoped all along that the day would come” to meet the family of the woman whose heart was beating in her chest. Under the network’s guidelines, the Coulters had contacted the four people who received Heather’s organs. Lori is the only one who pursued an in-person meeting, although they have received cards from the liver recipient. Mary Ruth said, “They [the network] told us to think about this really hard. There is the opportunity for lots of disappointment. Differences between you and the recipient could be upsetting. But we decided we’d do it, and if it’s bad, we’d walk away and say we did the best we could.”
A part of each other’s lives Through phone conversation they learned that Lori was living with her parents in Pueblo, Colo., so they combined a trip to see relatives with the chance to meet her. What they discovered was a petite 37-year-old woman who now considers the Coulters a second family to her. She calls them “wonderful” and says, “We are a big part of each other’s lives now.” The Coulters call her “a joy.” “They are such wonderful people who gave me this gift,” Mraovich said. “Meeting them, I was so full of joy and happiness.” Lori said she knows Heather’s life was dedicated to helping people and that her decision to be an organ donor continues to do that. “It feels like Heather and I are buddies, a team,” she said. “I know we are connected. I feel very comfortable, very secure. She’s with me at all times, like a guardian angel.” When asked to describe what it was like to meet the woman who has Heather’s heart, Dick choked with emotions and could only say, “It’s hard to put into words.” The heart is working perfectly, Lori said, thrilling her doctors. She has to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of her life, amounting to some 30 to 50 pills a day. They suppress her immune system to stave off rejection but leave her at greater risk of illness, even from common colds.
Her life is taking shape in other ways, too. While she was sick her marriage ended, and she now is living with a brother in Utah. Her job as an X-ray technician put her in contact with too many sick people, so she has begun working for a cardiologist. Dick and Mary Ruth continue their healing, too. They stay in touch with Lori by e-mail and periodic phone calls, and their visits with Heather’s many college friends give them joy. They also watch, and wonder, about the woman who killed their only child. She initially was sentenced to probation for the accident, which occurred while she was driving with a blood-alcohol limit of .12. The legal limit is .08. She completed a boot camp for offenders but later violated probation and was given a 32-month prison sentence. She now is living out-of-state. The Coulters say she has never shown any remorse for her actions. They don’t want vengeance; they just don’t want her to hurt anyone else. Mary Ruth said, “Our hope and prayer since she was sentenced is that she will get her act together.” And they are advocates for organ donation. All members of their family have registered as donors. “There was nothing I could do to save Heather,” her mother said, “but I could save someone else.” |
©2004
Episcopal Diocese of Kansas. All rights reserved.
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