Saving Nine Lives

Newsletter June 17, 2024 Together, we're #keepingitsacred...

One of the most sacred roles a member of the clergy can fill is that of helping to support a family considering organ donation for a loved one. And we know it. That's why two dozen of us showed up for a special clergy training focusing on organ donation at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center today.

Knowing the ins and outs of organ donation can help us support the families with information, and from there they can make decisions.

Today, we learned the medical criteria that indicate brain death: it most often occurs with independent evaluations of a neurologist, a general medicine physician, and then an apnea test with several staff present to evaluate if the patient can breathe on their own. If there is, after all of that, no sign of brain stem activity, the person would be declared brain dead. After this diagnosis, the medical staff must then direct an organ procurement organization to harvest or to not harvest organs. These decisions fall on the shoulders of the newly grieving family.

As spiritual leaders, we need to be equipped with a clear understanding of our tradition's values when it comes to making this sacred decision. We can support loved ones begin to process their grief, and relatively soon, make decisions that could ultimately save up to 9 other lives with donations of the heart, 2 kidneys, intestine, pancreas, 2 lungs, and in some cases splitting the liver to save an additional two lives.

A better way to equip our people with spiritual clarity in these moments is to do what I'm doing right now-- to encourage folks to consider end of life decisions well before they are ever necessary. This way, an awful situation with excruciating decisions can be made with greater clarity and honor of a loved one's wishes.

Traditionally, in Judaism, a person is encouraged to bury a loved one's body quickly after death, and to bury it whole. But, these new technologies have brought about new opportunities to save lives that didn't exist before. So modern thinkers stress that the Jewish value called pikuach nefesh/ to save a life, which is the highest value of all, takes precedence. Accordingly, organ donation has become a strongly held value to many.

And that is significant because there are 104,000 people across the United States currently on organ transplant waitlists (23,000 alone in California). And 17 people die each day waiting for these precious gifts.

And they are gifts. And many in the hospitals regard them as such. With the help of on-staff chaplains, hospitals and organ transplant centers have found beautiful ways to give honor and respect to the patient before their bodily death and subsequent organ harvesting-- including holding an honor walk where the patient is wheeled to the operating room for the final time through hallways lined by hospital staff honoring the gravity of the gift they are about to give, the doctors reading a text supplied by the family or playing a favorite song the patient loved, or holding a moment of silence before the proverbial plug is pulled.

This transforms the decision to donate organs from a purely transactional event to a sacred occasion. Organ recipient, Renee, shared with us today, a story about the young man whose liver she was given. She told us that his mother, before the impediments to his death were removed, said to him one last thing, "It doesn't end here." Meaning that his life was going to continue on as blessing to many other people who would receive his organs and other tissues (corneas, skin, etc.). His memory would continue to be a blessing. And it has.

Considering these deep questions is how we're keeping it sacred.

Together, we’re #keepingitsacred...

Rabbi Heather Miller

Founder, Keeping It Sacred

*Photo above is one of a mannequin used for educational purposes at the simulation center. No actual patients are shown.

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The above is an excerpt from a Keeping It Sacred newsletter. If you want to read the entire newsletter or any from our archives, please head over to: keepingitsacred.com/news 

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Thanks for your interest, and thanks for #keepingitsacred...