Winning Review by Kim Bagato: The Match By Susan Whitman Helfgot and William Novak

The Match is a unique account of two lives intertwined as a result of separate tragic events. The text is laced with Susan Whitman-Helfgot’s raw and honest thoughts about her husband’s life and death. She and William Novak give readers a behind the curtain look at the lives of face transplant donor Joseph Helfgot and Jim Maki who was the recipient of Helfgot’s generosity.

In this age of lawsuits and malpractice, the credibility, enthusiasm and warmth of the surgical team are noteworthy. I’ve heard it said that we don’t realize how strong we are until we’re up against what seem to be insurmountable odds. Only then do we find the strength necessary to press on. Often that strength is gained in the company of loved ones which was the case with the Helfgot and Maki family and friends.

Joseph’s family endured tentative moments teetering on the precipice of life and death. The Maki family endured pain of a different kind when Jim sustained a life-altering fall. Horror turned to hope when Joseph’s family agreed to donate the face of their beloved husband and father for an historic transplant. Susan Whitman-Helfgot and Jim Maki are living proof that calamity can bond people for good. May the record books bear evidence of thousands of transplant recipients living better lives through the unselfish gift of organ donation.

To learn more about organ donation: Donate Life America – www.donatelife.net United Network for Organ Sharing – www.unos.org U.S. Government – www.organdonor.gov

Review by Kim Bagato

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 and Schuster: A Conversation with Susan Whitman Helfgot Part 2

Q. Your mother-in-law, Rachel, endured tremendous hardships, and you describe her as one of the toughest women you’ve ever known. How did her tenacity influence Joseph while he was in and out of hospitals?

A. Joseph’s parents were survivors of Auschwitz, living under the most extreme conditions a human being can endure. Every day they made a conscious choice to stay alive and, somehow, they were able to. Joseph’s mother taught her son -- and taught me, as well -- everything there is to know about hope in the face of terrible odds. Joseph was very brave, and one definition of bravery is finding hope in action.

Q. What would you say to a healthy young person who’s getting a driver’s license and deciding whether or not to be an organ donor?

A. There’s a popular bumper sticker: “Don’t take your organs to heaven. Heaven knows we need them here.” Very few of us ever have an opportunity to save a life, but knowing that your death could save the life of another person is a powerful idea. And knowing that the death of a loved one has brought life to somebody else has provided great solace to many grieving families.

Q&A with Simon & Schuster

Danielle Lynn, Senior Publicist

Susan Whitman-Helfgot
http://thematchstory.com/
http://www.facebook.com/thematchstory
http://twitter.com/thematchstory
http://www.youtube.com/swhelfgot

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
http://thematchstory.com/
http://www.facebook.com/thematchstory
http://twitter.com/thematchstory
http://www.youtube.com/swhelfgot

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 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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