As my beloved friend Barbara Bahny lay mortally ill, those closest to her waited for a miracle.
“It’s a very strange feeling, praying for someone to die so a loved one can live,” our dear pal, Richard Zimmerman, told me.
Barbara had recently moved back to New York City after living in Washington, DC, for her dream job in public relations, before falling gravely sick. The many who adored her gathered at her hospital bedside, hoping, amid overwhelming pangs of guilt, that another person’s devastating break would spell lasting life for her.
It didn’t happen.
My friend, whom I’d met in junior high school in Queens, who shared my love of this country and of Israel, of foreign travel, pop culture and nights on the town, died in December 2015 of complications related to sarcoidosis while at the top of the list for a lung transplant that never came. She was 56 years old.
Yet despite unfathomable grief, I have hope that Barbara’s story might help save lives. It demonstrates that organ donors are desperately needed, particularly in New York state, where the rate of donorship is at rock bottom.
And I’m inspired by the heartbreaking story of a mother in Oklahoma, Keri Young, who made the decision to carry her unborn baby to term — a tiny girl who is destined to die shortly after birth — so her organs and tissues might be donated. This courageous gesture is a boon to medical research and it stands to save the lives of children who otherwise might not survive. For one couple, it stands to give meaning to their daughter’s life, however brief.
The mom and her husband, ESPN.com writer Royce Young, have named the little girl they’ll likely be able to hold in their arms for a few days, at most, Eva.
“Somehow through full body ugly crying, Keri looked up and asked, ‘If I carry her full term, can we donate her organs?’ ” Royce Young posted to Facebook Feb. 17 about his wife of eight years. The couple, who also have a son named Harrison, learned at the mom’s 19-week ultrasound that their daughter, expected to be born May 7, is afflicted with anencephaly — parts of her brain and skull are missing.
Keri Young posted to Facebook in December that she talked with her doctor and her pastor and came to the conclusion that organ donation was best for her and her family. With Eva’s help, up to 50 little ones’ lives could be saved in as little as 24 hours.
The good news is that organ donorship has been on the upswing in the United States since 2010. There were 9,079 deceased donors that year compared to 9,971 in 2016, for a record number of transplants totaling more than 33,600, as each donor can provide multiple organs, according to Joel Newman, assistant director of communications for United Network for Organ Sharing. In addition, live donors can provide a kidney or part of a liver to those in need.
But the picture is bleaker in New York. Because of religious or cultural objections — or the ludicrous, Monty Python-esque fear that someone could snatch an organ before one is done using it — New York is last or near last of the states in donorship rates among the adult population, with New York City-dwellers especially pulling the number down, according to Dr. Errol Gordon, a neurologist and co-chairman of The Mount Sinai Hospital Donor Council in Manhattan.
“Some people just want to be buried whole,’’ he told me. “Some are paranoid.’’
Last year, transplants were performed from 11 deceased donors at Mount Sinai. The need is exponentially greater.
Donating a relative’s organs “makes a tragedy a little bit better,” said Dr. Gordon. “Part of your loved one is living on. It provides some sort of closure and meaning to the family. A lot of people’s lives will improve dramatically because of it. Organ donors are heroes.”
Zimmerman, 57, became an organ donor after his mother died in 2003. “She was gone,” he said. “I loved what was inside of her. That will never leave me. When I’m gone, I hope my physical self will do some good.”
He registered as an organ donor when he renewed his California driver license. (I confess I have yet to sign up.)
He can’t save Barbara. But in her honor, he might one day give any number of people the gift of life. That’s worth everything.
Long before such things as cellphones, Twitter and Snapchat ruled, some teachers and students flirted shamelessly with each other or hooked up. Technology just made it easier. But blaming electronics for human behavior that’s unwise, unsafe, immoral, potentially illegal or just downright gross doesn’t cut it.
Frederick Lane, a Brooklyn lawyer and author of “Cybertraps for Educators” writes that 70 percent of illicit student-teacher relations are “accidental,” beginning with exchanges about things such as homework and veering into secrets, sexting or sex, often late at night.
It happens all over. In New York City, the office of Richard Condon, the public schools’ Special Commissioner of Investigation, has probed 995 complaints of inappropriate relations between Department of Education employees and students since April 2009, substantiating 145 of them, The Post reported. Setting an electronic curfew might not do enough.
Educators and school staffers who can’t control themselves should not be anywhere near youngsters.
Natural physical imperfections are OK by me. But tattooing freckles on faces? Seriously?
It’s part of a loopy trend that saw braces on the teeth of runway and magazine models two years ago, along with unruly eyebrows à la Frida Kahlo and thick glasses, The Post reported. Now, faux sun-kissed facial blotches are all the rage — made with pencils, stencil-like adhesives, or even etched semipermanently into the skin with pigments. I predict this, too, shall pass.
And I dread what comes next.
Astronomers announced the discovery of seven rocky, approximately Earth-size planets hanging out 39.5 light years from this world around a dwarf star called TRAPPIST-1. Cool!
The possibility that three of the orbs could contain “liquid water” raises a tantalizing question: Could life, intelligent or otherwise, exist beyond our solar system?
And when can I ship out there?
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