Thanksgiving Harvest

I survived being on call on Thanksgiving. We actually were not very busy so I got to get some work done and watched football most of the day. Around 10pm we got called to do an "organ harvest". Somebody who has been pronounced brain dead and their family wishes to donate their organs. In this case, it was a teenager killed in a drunk driving accident. They took his heart, kidneys, pancreas, and liver. Organ harvests are strange. The person is legally dead, but they are on a ventilator so their body is still alive. It's actually easy from an anesthesia standpoint. There's really not much for me to do. I just have to watch his blood pressure and give some heparin when the surgeon says to. During the whole case, his chest was open and you could see his healthy heart pounding away. I could have reached out and touched it. After they clamped the aorta, the alarms on my monitors went nuts. His heart went into irregular rhythms, then asystole. My job was officially over and I turned off the ventilator and the monitors. I peeked over the curtain and they had poured ice all in his chest to cool the heart (a cold heart needs less oxygen). About 10 minutes later, it was put in this ice chest. An ambulance arrived to take the surgeon and the heart to the airport where he boarded a private plane to go out of state to perform the transplant. He has 4 hours from the time the heart comes out of the donor until it must be in the recipient, and the surgeon who performs the organ harvest comes from the recipient's hospital. That means, whoever is getting the heart is already in surgery and has his chest open and ready for the transplant when the heart gets to the hospital. Our surgeons are not involved at all. The other organs have a lot more time before they have to be transplanted, but they cannot be harvested unless there is a recipient ready and waiting. A lot of paperwork takes place before the harvest can be started.

My guess is, 5 people had a very happy Thanksgiving.