'A CHANCE TO LIVE'

Born in East Greenbush, Dave Gray’s life was far from sedentary. He enjoyed hiking, fishing, hunting, along with an array of hobbies which included honey harvesting and canning homemade sauces and jams. In 2015, Gray’s life came to a screeching halt when he was stricken with viral cardiomyopathy, a heart affliction that causes the muscle to become enlarged, thick and rigid.

After many days in the hospital, being put on and off a ventilator, then receiving a donor heart and being told it was no longer viable due to calcification, finally a heart transplant at Westchester Medical Center saved Gray’s life in 2016.

Now a volunteer and advocate for organ donation, Gray, pre-pandemic, would travel weekly from his home in Albany to Westchester to encourage other patients as they navigate survival like he once did. For his dedication, Gray received the “Friend of Medicine” award from the Westchester County Medical Society in June of 2019. Gray keeps close contact with the nurses and doctors who supported him while he waited in the hospital for a new heart; he considers them his second family.

Nikki Tomlin-Dennison was returning home after another day running Sodexo, a bakery on Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s (RPI) campus, but when she parked her car she suffered a stroke. Prior to that point, she hadn’t seen a doctor regularly.

“One day I was doing this job that I loved, the next day I was in the hospital and they were hoping that I would still be alive the next day,” Dennison said. Before waking up the next day, she came to peace with dying, before deciding she wanted to live. Dennison would immediately start rehabilitation at Sunnyview Rehabilitation Center in Schenectady and soon after start dialysis treatment at Albany Medical Center.

But the treatments began to wear on Dennison, quickly taking over her entire life. To keep her spirits up, she began taking classes at Schenectady County Community College. Soon her doctor put her on the donor list for a new kidney.

How long a recipient may wait for a donor organ depends on the degree of compatibility between them and the donor, time on dialysis and on the transplant waitlist, and expected survival post-transplant. Some get a match within several months, while others wait several years. For Dennison, three years after her stroke, including one year of preparation, which included getting to a healthy weight and having two potentially infected teeth pulled, her organ came a month later.

“That afternoon I was on dialysis, that evening I had a brand new kidney,” Dennison recalls, putting an end to her exhausting routine of dialysis.
National Donor Sabbath is a three-day observance from Nov. 13-15. The goal is to engage all major religions in the United States to focus their efforts on educating congregations on the critical shortage recipients face and to pray for those affected by donation and transplantation.

Donate Life NYS, a non-profit organization that promotes organ donation in the state, grew out of efforts by the NYS Department of Health to create the Organ Donor Registry and then promote it. Each November, Donate Life NYS reaches out to religious congregants with its message.
Catholic teaching is clear that organ donation is a positive and charitable thing to do. In April 2019, Pope Francis said “donation means looking … beyond one’s individual needs and opening oneself generously to a wider good.” The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ethical & Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services states that “Catholic health care institutions should encourage and provide the means whereby those who wish to do so may arrange for the donation of their organs and bodily tissue, for ethically legitimate purposes, so that they may be used for donation and research after death.” 

The need for organ donation is great, especially in New York State. According to Donate Life NYS, there are almost 10,000 New Yorkers who need a life-saving organ transplant, while New Yorkers make up 10 percent of the national organ transplant waiting list.

“I didn’t realize how sick I was because I felt so good the day after. It was fantastic for me,” Dennison says of her post-surgery experience.

When it comes to choosing to become a donor, Gray — who has painted rocks with the “Donate Life” theme on them and placed them all around state parks during the pandemic — is blunt: “Folks, you can’t take (the organs) with you,” and “if you’re dying right now, are you going to tell your kids you’re not going to take an organ? No, of course, you’re going to take it.”

People of any age and medical history can be donors, although you must be at least 16 to register yourself. There are no diseases that automatically prevent you from being a donor. Organs are matched with people based on blood type, body size and tissue. Recipients are found on a national waiting list operated by the United Network for Organ Sharing. One myth: Donations usually do not change funeral arrangements and an open casket is possible. For more information, visit donate­lifenys.org.

Another way to become an organ donor is through your York State driver’s license. When you get a new driver’s license, you will be asked whether you would like to be an organ and tissue donor. If you say yes, a red heart and the title “Organ Donor” will appear on the front of your license, and your information will be forwarded to the state organ donor registry. For more information, visit dmv.ny.gov.

“Donating, you are doing something very selfless. It’s pure love. You’re giving someone else a chance to live and being someone who is a recipient of that, I thank you,” Dennison said.