Published: April 19, 2008 11:15 pm      

Gratitude to those who chose to give

Central Park vigil honors organ donors

ASHLAND — Sue Doughty wears a lapel pin picturing a woman she never met, but to whom she owes her life.

It’s a picture of Melody Benson, who died of a stroke at 43. It was May 16, 2005. Three hours later, transplant surgeons replaced Doughty’s failing liver with Benson’s.

Like any transplant recipient, Doughty felt — and still feels — a strong sense of gratitude to her donor. Perhaps she has more to be grateful for than some because, in addition to a life-saving transplant, Doughty made a new friend.

Melody Benson’s mother, Nettie, wanted to meet the recipient of her daughter’s liver the moment she heard the transplant had taken place. That wasn’t possible under organ donor rules, so she had to wait a year.

The day the year was up Benson and Doughty talked on the phone and made plans to meet for dinner that night.

Of course it was that urgent, Benson said. “She’s got a part of my daughter.”

By now, however, their relationship is far deeper than a grieving mother’s clinging to her daughter’s memory.

They’ve become fast friends who travel together and stand close together the way sisters do.

So it was fitting that they came to Ashland together from their Indiana homes to attend and speak at a ceremony in remembrance of organ donors on Saturday.

Gathered under a canopy in Central Park, recipients and donor families lit candles to mark the life-saving contributions made by donors.

“We want to increase awareness of the need for organ donors,” said Joy Adkins, community education coordinator for West Virginia/Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates. There are more than 98,000 people in the United States on waiting lists for organs, she said. “The need for organs far outpaces the supply.”

The ceremony was hosted by Second Chance at Life, a coalition of recipients, those awaiting organs, and donor families.

Second Chance was founded by Patricia Rice, who had a liver transplant in December 2004. Rice remembers longing for someone to talk to who would connect with her own sense of worry and confusion.

“I didn’t know what would happen. I didn’t know what to expect. It was absolutely scary,” she said.

She set up meetings with representatives of Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates and went on to organize a support group that became Second Chance.

“Nobody else knows what you go through,” said Raenotta Spillman, who is married to Rice’s nephew and who received a kidney and pancreas at about the same time as Rice had her transplant.

MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or at (606) 326-2652.