After you were declared brain dead on Friday, that is when Gift of Life took over. They needed to keep everything going on you until they could find matches for your organs. This part of your care was covered by them financially, because Dad asked how that worked.
I don't know if I mentioned that we had a meeting with the Gift of Life people later on in the day of your accident, and I thought it was just a preliminary meeting in case you died. I guess they already knew you weren't going to make it. Pastor Matt went with us and Mr. Brown (I guess I should call him Dr. Brown-Matt and Andrew's dad). It was very helpful to have them both in there. The Tom Haverford doctor was in there too and two ladies from Gift of Life. They were trying to explain to us that with Gift of Life we had to have a "resuscitate" order as opposed to a "do not resuscitate" order. It was weird because there were opposite goals at stake. We were having the meeting because you had signed up to be an organ donor on your drivers license but we had to give the final approval since you were under 18. We knew that this was something you would want to do.
Later on, we met with another person from Gift of Life, a tall black guy. He was asking us all kinds of questions like your health history, etc. He then had to go through an icky list of what we wanted to donate. I was ok with major organs, but some of the other options like skin, veins, etc. was grossing me out, so I asked if we could move it along. I think Pastor Matt sat in on this in that meeting as well, Poor guy! We ultimately decided on the heart, lungs, liver, kidneys and pancreas as well as eyes and skin. I think we went with whole eyes-I don't know if that's a separate option than just corneas. Hopefully somebody will get those beautiful blue eyes and we can look into them again.
I can't get over how great the Gift of Life people were. They scheduled your surgery for Sunday morning, so I think between Friday and Saturday (although for some reason, it seemed like most of it happened on Saturday), they sent out offers and were hearing back. In the meantime, they told us that we could put a playlist together of songs to play during your surgery. We gave that task to Jake since he knew what songs you liked the best. Some of us had some suggestions to add too. He did a great job with it and we got the list back which would be nice to make a CD of or something.
In addition to this, they also wanted us to write things down that we wanted said either before the surgery started or after it was over. For some reason, I thought they said before, since they would be removing the organs although you would still be on machines. Anyway, I was so excited because a Bible verse just came to me that had to do with Jesus breathing his last breath-like "Into your hands I commend my spirit and then He breathed his last"-sorry, that is extremely paraphrased! I asked if that could be that last thing read. There were a lot of other things that were written down to be read, like quotes, messages, etc. I just remember thinking how amazing that was of Gift of Life to offer to do those things, because it was honoring to you, even though you technically couldn't "hear" it (then again, who knows, right?) We have that list as well.
For contacting the recipients, how it works is we provide Gift of Life with our contact information and then it's up to the recipients if they want to contact us. This gift is very overwhelming to them and sometimes it's hard for them to meet the donor family, because how do you say "thank you", etc.? I'm sure it will be hard for us too, but it might be nice someday to see who has your heart, lungs, etc., and to be reminded that a part of your physical body is still alive on this earth.
I actually just completed those letters and I am going to send them out today. I made sure that the Gospel message was included in case that was the only contact we were going to have with these people. Not only do these recipients get a second chance at their earthly life, how wonderful would that be for them to have an opportunity to be saved and secure their eternal home in Heaven? I don't know if Gift of Life will frown upon that in an initial letter, but I think they should let us say whatever we want to as long we don't give away your identity.
Hopefully I will have more to write on Gift of Life if we hear from any of the recipients. We did get a general letter from them that said who got what, as far as male or female and what ages. A 30-something male got your heart and your lungs and kidneys went to men in their 40's. Your liver went to a 60-something female. There was no one to take your pancreas at the time of the surgery, so that was designated for research and we even got a copy of a letter that was thankful for the donation. A few weeks after your death, Gift of Life sent a beautiful engraved medal as a keepsake. Like I said, I hope to have more to write about this in the future.
Side note: Your Aunt Jaime was really impacted by your accident and organ donation and checked into being a volunteer with Gift of Life. She might even want to work for them as a career at some point. She really wants to move back up to Michigan because she thinks it's important to be close to family, especially after losing you.
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