Second Chances: An Accident Victim Gives New Life To Five Strangers As An Organ Donor

By Christine Morris

Knight Ridder Newspapers

MIAMI - In the long days and nights following DeAnne Connolly Graham's darkest hour - the death of her husband in a Miramar, Fla., accident - five desperate people got a second chance.

The new widow found the strength to make a critical decision. She allowed transplant teams to save seven of Rodney Graham's healthy organs, rush them to the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center and transplant them into five people facing death.

In the 48 hours after Rodney Graham died, the five patients suddenly freed from the excruciating wait for organs had concrete hope for new lives:

Twelve-year-old Diego Grimaldo, who has been sick since his premature birth, got a new kidney that will liberate him from dialysis, let him jump into a swimming pool for the first time, expand his meal choices beyond "diet stuff" and make him strong enough to help his mother care for baby brother David.
Larry Buhrman, 55, a Deerfield Beach periodontist who played competitive tennis, has a new liver after coming perilously close to dying of a rare autoimmune disease. He and his wife, Melanie, say they wish organ donation had been possible when their first child, 3-year-old Brian, drowned 23 years ago. "We wanted something to come of it other than loss," Melanie Buhrman said.
Kevin Roy, a construction worker from Loxahatchee in Palm Beach County, is home with his new heart, relaxing in his garden after three years of pain, swelling and dizziness and several brushes with death. Roy, 45, had spent the past five months at Jackson awaiting a transplant, with a machine pumping for his badly damaged heart.
Richard Jackson, a 42-year-old auto mechanic with severe emphysema, has two new lungs. His illness was so grave that he and his wife, Donna, moved from Lake Wales to Miami six months ago to continue the transplant wait. Getting new lungs is extremely tricky because of the high risk of infection, and Jackson remains in intensive care.
Michael Martelli, a Tampa paramedic until diabetes shut down his kidneys, has a new kidney and pancreas. The therapy of the past several months, following a lifetime of illness, had left him sleepless, unable to concentrate, frantic for the improvement that could come only from two new organs. "I couldn't live like that," said Martelli, 34. "Thanks to this family, it's a rebirth for five people," said Martelli's mother, Grace, who traveled with him from Tampa and set up a second home in the motel across the street from Jackson. Tears filled her eyes, as they had countless times in the days since the complicated transplant operation. "It's coming from the bottom of my heart," she whispered. "I thank God every day."

Thankful, too, even in her grief, is DeAnne Connolly Graham. The donor's widow counts up the potential beneficiaries of Rodney's other tissues: His corneas gave sight to two people; the sclera, or whites of his eyes, could be used in transplant or reconstructive surgery for up to 18 people; and his bone may be used for reconstructive surgery in 30 to 40 people.

"I am so thankful I can say that: Nearly 70 people have a new quality of life - life itself - because of him," she said.

The Donor's Story

The source of these priceless gifts was a healthy 33-year-old man who was about to realize the payoff from years of hard work. Rodney Graham, who had dropped out of high school after his second year, was going to graduate June 16 from Ultrasound Diagnostic School. He was completing an internship and already had job offers.

Rodney worked hard with DeAnne, 43, a Miami office manager, to blend their two families after they got married. Her son Nathan Connolly, now 23, recently completed a master's degree at the University of Chicago. Joshua is 15, a budding musician. Rodney's son, R.J., 9, plays basketball and other sports, and the couple's 7-year-old daughter, Janelle, loves drama and dance.

Rodney Graham was declared brain dead the morning of April 5, after an accident that happened while his wife was driving him to work at Memorial Hospital West in Pembroke Pines. The couple began arguing, and Rodney got out of the car, falling and hitting his head on a rock and lapsing into a coma.

Many Still Waiting

The five people with Rodney's major organs know how lucky they are. That thousands are not so lucky makes them alternately sad and angry.

"I can't believe the numbers - they're staggering," said Roy, who filled his months of waiting by becoming a "self-taught cardiologist" and learning as much as he could about transplants.

More than 76,000 people are on waiting lists for organs in the United States. Dr. Andreas Tzakis, co-director of the University of Miami's organ-transplant program and the surgeon who gave Buhrman his new liver, estimates that only one in three usable organs are transplanted.

About a third of the organs are lost because of some failure in the system - usually neglecting to even ask the family members about donation. The other third are not used because families refuse the request.

"We're sort of in denial about dying. We don't like to think about it," Buhrman said. "That's why there aren't more donors."

Buhrman had come close to getting a living donation, a section of liver from the oldest of his three sons. Adam Buhrman, 23, had the right blood type and was going to be evaluated by the transplant team.

Buhrman's illness, primary sclerosing cholangitis, had responded to medication for years until the deterioration that destroyed his digestion and caused a 45-pound weight loss. He knew he was almost out of options, but Buhrman, like any parent, didn't want Adam to have to go through the surgery.

Surgical Marathon

"In a perfect world, a year and a half ago I would have gotten a liver," said Buhrman. "But so many people need them."

The long-awaited call came to Melanie Buhrman's cell phone at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, April 5.

Transplant teams began retrieving Rodney's organs in the middle of the night. The heart and lungs were transplanted first, in the early morning hours of Friday, April 6, followed by the liver. Martelli's kidney and pancreas surgery began Friday night, and Diego got his kidney about midnight Saturday.

When Melanie Buhrman got the call, her husband's initial fear was that for a second time he was a backup recipient, meaning he would get the liver only if it didn't work out for the even sicker person ahead of him on the waiting list.

"I really didn't want to get a liver under those circumstances," he said. But after Melanie assured him it was really his, they found themselves in a waiting room at the hospital with Richard Jackson.

"He was so euphoric," Buhrman said. "We couldn't believe how lucky we were."

Jackson, whose emphysema is likely congenital, had nearly given up hope of getting new lungs, said his wife, Donna. "He was getting worse and worse," she said. "We never did think he would receive a donor."

She had stopped working and her husband had become a prisoner in their home, dependent on extra oxygen to breathe. "They gave him 14 months," Donna said.

When UM/Jackson agreed to do the transplant, the couple drove down from Lake Wales in a trailer they have turned into a home. Donna Jackson drives the long stretch between the hospital and the trailer home, alone in South Florida, strengthened by her husband's determination to pull through despite myriad complications.

Richard Jackson's new lungs didn't work right away, said transplant surgeon Si Pham, so he had to be put on a heart-lung machine for a time after surgery. "The lung is communicating with the outside all the time, so it infects more easily," Pham said. The good news is that Jackson's body has not rejected his new lungs - a fear with any transplant.

After getting the call about Graham's organs, Dr. Richard J. Kaplon rushed to Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood at 2 a.m. April 6 to retrieve the heart and the lungs.

"I like to actually see the heart myself before I use it; hold it in my hand," Kaplon said.

Pham prepared Kevin Roy for the transplant, putting him on the heart-lung machine as Kaplon walked in the door with the donated heart. "You want it in the body warm and beating in four to six hours," Kaplon said.

Time Was Running Out

Roy suffered from dilated cardiomyopathy, what Kaplon calls "a big, sick heart," a condition that may have been caused by an obscure virus - or more than one. "I didn't think he was going to live long enough to get a heart," Kaplon said.

When Roy became ill a few years ago, he ignored the symptoms, first thinking he had a bad case of the flu and then assuming it was the cancer that had killed his 20-year-old sister.

"Finally, when I couldn't bear it any longer, I told my wife, `Let's go to the hospital,' " Roy said. "I thought I would never get out."

He learned that he needed a heart transplant, but still ahead were years of big scares, a wait to qualify for Medicare, and an experimental new pump that gave him temporary relief. He even got a couple of calls for hearts that didn't come through.

"I wrote my donor family a thank-you card this morning," Roy said two weeks after his life-saving transplant.

Back in the early morning hours of April 6, after prepping Roy for his surgery, Pham joined Dr. Richard Thurer in transplanting the lungs into Richard Jackson.

Tzakis and his team began Buhrman's liver transplant shortly thereafter, and about 15 hours later, Dr. George Burke started Martelli's double kidney and pancreas transplant.

Burke and his team were in the middle of a marathon of their own: Two unrelated transplants - one a kidney and the other a kidney and pancreas - occurred during the same two days.

Patients like Martelli have watched themselves slowly disintegrate, Burke said, as diabetes leads to vision problems, hypertension and neuropathy.

Though Martelli got his new organs much faster than he expected, it was none too soon. "The last few months, he was going down the drain," said his mother, Grace. "He was very, very depressed."

Martelli, who is still in the hospital, knows that his progress must be measured in small steps. "I guess God has a plan for everyone," he said.

Diego's Kidney

Many hours after the other operations - about midnight Saturday - young Diego got his new kidney.

The call came at 4:30 in the morning, an hour before Diego and his mother would have left their West Dade home for his dialysis treatment.

"I was desperate because we had searched the whole family for a donor," said Gloria Grimaldo, his mother.

She couldn't donate because she has hemophilia, as does Diego.

Her sister had come from Colombia to try to give a kidney, but she tested positive for tuberculosis.

Baby David was a surprise who arrived five months ago. Gloria Grimaldo had suffered numerous miscarriages before and after Diego's birth.

Her doctor had recommended that she stop trying to have another baby.

"We thought God sent him to give me the kidney transplant," Diego said, adding proudly, "Be sure to say big brother Diego named him."

"When they told me I was pregnant, I started to cry," his mother said as Diego reached through the controls on his hospital bed to stroke her hand. "Now I'm thanking God for both these wonderful gifts."

Rodney Graham died three days before Easter. "People are living better lives because of Rodney," DeAnne's son Nathan said in his eulogy. "This is an example of the extent of his reach."

This article posted October 6, 2001.