I'll Bring A Side Dish...

The Thanksgiving turkey sits in another oven, our family somewhat relieved having migrated to the smells and laughter of a different home. Better to sit and watch another husband still living carve the white and dark rather than to have our table’s head occupied by a replacement.

I pondered whether to bring along the silver gravy ladle that had belonged to my great-grandmother. At first thought it seemed having the dented thing with me might sooth the continuing sensation that everything has been destroyed. I tell myself that I finally decided to leave it in the drawer so it would not be lost in the holiday frenzy. In truth, it is because I am too raw to share, too angry to have warm memories occupy another woman’s kitchen.

The four children and I will go to my husband's grave tomorrow. We will pull the soft veil from the stone and stand together. I pray the dank earth will take pity upon me, releasing my grief. I am desperately waiting.

Susan Whitman-Helfgot
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Susan Whitman Helfgot with William Novak

"I started the book expecting to turn away. Three hours later, I set it down, in awe. ...The range of this book is astonishing... Because the focus shifts so quickly, the book reads like a thriller. And it is. But more, it’s a powerful account of people in crisis, when there’s no time to think and all you really have to go on is your character."

Jesse Kornbluth, HeadButler.com, October 20, 2010

Full Review below.

http://www.headbutler.com/books/non-fiction/match-complete-strangers-miracle-face-transplant-two-lives-transformed

We would like to thank Jesse for sharing your thoughts on The Match!

Susan Whitman-Helfgot
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Simon & Schuster: A Conversation with Susan Whitman Helfgot Part 3

Q. How did you feel when viewing the “Boston Med” documentary for the first time?

A. I was sitting next to Jim Maki and Bo Pomahac and other friends from the Brigham and we watched it together. They were finally able to meet Joseph, in a way. They never knew him in life. Film is a powerful medium. Terence Wrong, the show’s producer, and his crew, captured the final images of my husband three weeks before his death. Many new organ donors have come forward because of the show. I am deeply grateful.

Q. You didn’t meet Dr. Pomahac until after your husband’s death, and yet you discovered that their backgrounds are similar. Can you elaborate?

A. Bo Pomahac came to Boston from the Czech Republic two days after graduating from medical school. He had very little money and no job. Through hard work and talent, he made his way through Boston’s closed medical community to the point where he led a team of three dozen medical professionals through one of the most difficult surgeries ever performed.

My husband grew up dirt power on the Lower East Side of New York, and after a successful career as a university professor, he managed to fight his way into Hollywood, where he built a leading movie research company that now has offices on two continents.

Q. The decision to donate Joseph’s face was one you made with all of his children. How do they feel about the choice today?

A. We are all proud that our family was able to help Jim Maki, but the resulting publicity has been difficult for them.

Q&A with Simon & Schuster

Danielle Lynn, Senior Publicist

Susan Whitman-Helfgot
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Simon & Schuster: A Conversation with Susan Whitman Helfgot Part 1

Q. What was your motivation in writing this book?

A. When The Boston Globe reported that my husband had been the donor for Jim Maki’s face transplant, I was approached about the rights to my story. I remember thinking that this isn’t my story. It belongs to my late husband, to Jim Maki, and to Bo Pomahac, the transplant surgeon. My attorney suggested that I keep a diary. Then I got to know Jim and Bo, and several other people who were intimately connected to the transplant, and my diary morphed into a book with the help of William Novak.

Q. How did Joseph’s medical treatments convince him—and you—of the importance of organ donation?

A. My husband, Joseph, waited for years for a new heart, but only about a third of those in that situation ever receive one. The rest die waiting. Right now, more than 100,000 people in this country alone are waiting for some type of solid organ transplant, but only about a quarter of them will get new organs this year. Potential recipients are on death row, hoping for the phone to ring. Without more donors, they will continue to die, waiting for the call.

Q&A with Simon & Schuster

Danielle Lynn, Senior Publicist

Susan Whitman-Helfgot
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The Match: A Brief Description

Joseph Helfgot, the son of Holocaust survivors, worked his way from a Lower East Side tenement to create a successful Hollywood research company. But his heart was failing. After months of waiting for a heart transplant, he died during the operation.

Hours after his death, his wife Susan was asked a shocking question: would she donate her husband's face to a total stranger?

The stranger was James Maki, the adopted son of parents who spent part of World War II in an internment camp for Japanese Americans. Rebelling against his stern father, a professor, by enlisting to serve in Vietnam, he returned home a broken man, addicted to drugs. One night he fell facedown onto the electrified third rail of a Boston subway track.

A young Czech surgeon who was determined to make a better life on the other side of the Iron Curtain was on call when the ambulance brought Maki to the hospital. Although Dr. Bohdan Pomahac gave him little chance of survival, Maki battled back. He was sober and grateful for a second chance, but he became a recluse, a man without a face. His only hope was a controversial face transplant, and Dr. Pomahac made it happen.

In The Match, Susan Whitman Helfgot captures decades of drama and history, taking us from Warsaw to Japan, from New York to Hollywood. Through wars and immigration, poverty and persecution, from a medieval cadaver dissection to a stunning seventeen-hour face transplant, she weaves together the story of people forever intertwined—a triumphant legacy of hope.

Susan Whitman Helfgot

Author, The Match

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The Match – AOPO Excerpts Part 4

Excerpt from prepared remarks by Susan Whitman Helfgot at the 2010 National Association of Organ Procurement Organizations recently held in Baltimore, Maryland.

... From a purely medical perspective, we know that the gift of facial tissue upon transplant ceases to be part of the donor and becomes the servant of a new master, directed by the brain which orchestrates its movements, imbuing it with new expressions, a new joie de vivre. Virtually no trace of the donor is left. But to a grieving widow, or to a mother or father, it is almost impossible to explain. So, why then, do donor families step forward and say yes? ....

AOPO's Mission

AOPO represents and serves Organ Procurement Organizations through advocacy, support, and development of activities that will maximize the availability of organs and tissues and enhance the quality, effectiveness, and integrity of the donation process.

As of July 30, 2010, 107,913 people are on the waiting list to receive the Gift of Life.

By: Susan Whitman Helfgot, Author of The Match available in bookstores & online October 12

Susan Whitman-Helfgot
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Hospitals and Having the Conversation about Organ Donation

A young mother wrote me a note. She lost her one month old baby and is sad because no one asked her if her little son could be an organ donor.

This was my reply:

"I know very well how much healing comes with the knowledge that a part of your loved one can continue helping another life to go on. I have never lost a child so it is impossible for me to know the depth of your grief, but I am deeply saddened for you and wish you strength during what is still a very difficult time in your life.

A few comments might help you, though. First, doctors and nurses are not directly involved in conversations about organ donation. This is left to family counselors who are employees of organ banks around the country. Sometimes, due to distance, other ongoing cases in other hospitals and simply a lack of staff, these conversations just never happen as there is no one available to speak to a family.

Sometimes, hospitals do not have the resources to help with organ recovery. Not every hospital participates in organ recovery; this is particularly the case with small hospitals who do not have appropriate staff or resources.

It is also possible that your child's medical condition made it improbable or impossible for him to be a viable organ donor and, rather than start a discussion and "get your hopes up", it was determined not to broach the subject with you and he was disqualified at the outset.

But your letter raises a very important point. So little is known by the general public about the process of organ donation. Not only is it important for us to sign up as organ donors, it is imperative that we communicate this to our primary care physicians and to our families that we have done so. Then, they may advocate strongly for us if the situation ever arises. Their first call should be to the local organ bank, even before calling the rest of the family. Although the hospital should help facilitate this, sometimes they are unable to help. There is no advocate like a family advocate."

Susan Whitman-Helfgot
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Donate Life

The Match author Susan Whitman Helfgot – AOPO Excerpts Part 3

Excerpt from prepared remarks by Susan Whitman Helfgot at the 2010 National Association of Organ Procurement Organizations recently held in Baltimore, Maryland.

... When our ancestors were on the hunt, a quick glance between two humans often spelled the difference between survival and starvation. Our face is the most intimate and precious part of our body; it is the purveyor of the very air we breathe and the nutrients we ingest to survive. And, every face tells a running story to others every moment of every day beyond anything that can ever be achieved with mere words. It follows, then, that donating a loved one’s face is different and will always remain so.

AOPO's Mission

AOPO represents and serves Organ Procurement Organizations through advocacy, support, and development of activities that will maximize the availability of organs and tissues and enhance the quality, effectiveness, and integrity of the donation process.

As of July 30, 2010, 107,913 people are on the waiting list to receive the Gift of Life.

By: Susan Whitman Helfgot, Author of The Match available in bookstores & online October 12

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Modern Miracles & Making Fast Friends

I traveled back from Los Angeles last night with my boys. A flight attendant named Jennie recognized me from Boston Med. We talked and became fast friends. Face transplants are a wonder of modern medicine. My experience with Jennie is a modern miracle of another kind. From a cable channel in San Francisco, she watched a show. A week later, at 35,000 feet and 1500 miles away, somewhere over the Mississippi River, she met me on a plane. We are now fast friends. What a world we live in. Rejoice every day.

Susan Whitman Helfgot

We are miracles, made from stardust - Thoughts on Life, Perseid Meteor Shower & Boston Med Finale

Those of you who know me well, know that I am a sucker for things that twinkle in the sky. I am still awed, even after years of studying science, when I pause to consider that my bones, spun into being by chemically rich RNA, are made from calcium and other elements created during supernova explosions that occurred many hundreds of millions of years ago. Somehow, these chemicals magically found their way here, to our tiny planet and into our complex biological bodies carrying forth the torch of creation. We are miracles -- made from stardust.

It is fitting that, as the final episode of Boston Med airs tonight, the Perseid Meteor Shower of 2010 will perform overhead. As we pass through Swift-Tuttle's shattered comet tail, stardust rich meteors will rain down upon us. Tonight, as a historic face transplant unfolds on television, the sky will deliver its bounty outside, unaware of our small medical triumph. I encourage you to watch both of these amazing shows.

Final Episode of Boston Med. Tonight on ABC. 10 p.m. EST.

Perseid Meteor Shower. Tonight on Planet Earth. Northern Hemisphere. Any darkened sky channel near you.

"May you live in interesting times."

Chinese Proverb.

Susan Whitman Helfgot

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