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AOPO Excerpts Part 1

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

... finally removing your wedding ring from your finger after a period of time signifies acceptance of a loss. So, too, is saying, “yes” when asked to make the gift of a loved one’s organs. It is powerfully difficult, requiring an immediate acceptance of the fact someone we love dearly has just died, our yes signifying the staggering truth, “Yes, I realize he is gone and is never coming back." But the donation of a face is a very different kind of organ donation, tapping into a different kind of acceptance, probing the very deepest emotional spaces we inhabit as human beings.

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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"I loved the way the book moved around, loved learning about your beloved husband and all the other characters." Lee Woodruff The Match

Susan Whitman Helfgot asks readers and fans to write to the United Nations

Reading an article in Time Magazine about a young woman who was disfigured in the mid-east. I feel like the little boy in Holland who plugged a dyke for which there was no repair. http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20100809,00.html

My call to action. Write to the United Nations: http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/vaw/index.htm

Sadly yours,

Susan Whitman Helfgot
Author, The Match
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Don't ever run in heeled sandals

I ran down Ave. Louis Pasteur yesterday in ridiculous humidity, late to a lunch with my advisor from Simmons College. As I sped across the street in my once pressed, now shriveled, white linen suit slipping in barely-there sandals, I realized why they invented New Balance and Puma. Moral: don't ever run in heeled sandals. Especially in an old city like Boston with cobblestone sidewalks. What on earth was I thinking? I sprinted past Harvard Medical School trying to think of a creative way to ask for another extension. She's heard it before, the "things don't seem to be slowing down anytime soon" speech. As I burst through the door out of breath, she gave me a "I know, you're flat out and you'll be needing another extension" look. Which brings me to faces. Sometimes you just don't need words. But you always need a face. I'm glad Jim Maki has been given a chance to live life as a man with a face.

Susan Whitman Helfgot

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Caregivers of Team Heart Rwanda and The Match

I sat in an office building this week in Boston's South End meeting with members of Brigham and Women's Hospital. We had gathered to discuss plans for an upcoming fall event honoring one of my favorite groups, Team Heart Rwanda. Each year, Boston cardiac surgeons, nurses and technicians travel to tiny Rwanda and perform life saving surgery for the nation's young people. They do this on their own dime and time. Sadly, in a county of 10 million, there is not one trained open-heart cardiac surgeon. They were either killed or fled during the genocide. As the infrastructure to support their work is slowly rebuilt, children have been dying without simple penicillin to treat strep infection. Many who survive childhood with untreated strep are left with rheumatic heart disease and will soon die without open-heart surgery.

Team Heart includes many wonderful caregivers who kept my husband alive for a long time, and The Match will toast them at a gala on November 10th at Harvard Medical School presenting a share of proceeds from book sales. But, as our discussion turned to corporate sponsors for the party, I was far away, looking out the window at the Prudential Center across the street. It seemed impossible to believe that just a few years ago, Joseph and I bought our first house right around the corner; a bombed out brownstone in what was then a rough and tumble not even ready to be gentrified kind of frontier-land. My old neighborhood was almost unrecognizable to me now. Boston Duck Boats filled up with chattering tourists in front of a Cheesecake Factory. Tall buildings loomed over what was once cracked sidewalk.

So much has been created and much also lost in the intervening years since those early days when colored sheets tacked up on windows served as early my first curtains. While Rwanda was losing a generation, Joseph and I were busy creating two members of a new one. Team Heart Rwanda is a reminder that nothing is ever completely lost.

Visit Team Heart Rawanda. http://www.teamheart.org/tag/susan-whitman-helfgot/)

Susan Whitman Helfgot
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