Family Knows Both Sides of the Transplantation Story - Lynda Corea
When 22-year-old Mike Corea lay dying in a Columbus hospital hooked to a ventilator, his parents Lynda and Chuck grieved. But amid their pain, one decision was simple: Mike would become an organ donor.
Lynda and Chuck experienced firsthand the miraculous gift of organ donation. Less than a decade before his death, Mike was a liver recipient. “That transplant gave him his second life,” says Lynda. “It allowed him to live a full life and be happy.”
Shortly after Mike was born in December 1983, he was diagnosed with biliary atresia, a rare disease of the liver and bile ducts. Surgeons at Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital in Cleveland performed a procedure to create an open duct so bile could drain from Mike’s liver. But the Coreas were told their son would probably die within six months.
“We didn’t believe a word of it,” recalls Lynda. “We took him home, and at six months, Mike was sitting and beginning to crawl. He was happy and healthy.” Still, the surgeons insisted it was a fluke and Mike would die before he was two. Again, he defied the odds.
Mike took medication to stimulate bile production and maintained a no-fat diet. Doctors told his parents he would eventually need a liver transplant. Otherwise, he was a typical boy who played baseball, rode his bike and went to summer camp. By age 11, however, Mike’s condition had deteriorated, and he was placed on the organ waiting list.
More than two years later, in February 1997, Mike received his donor liver. He was released from the hospital within a week and back at school three weeks later. Overjoyed at his new-found energy and health, Mike joined the track team that spring and played baseball in the summer. He committed to live “with no regrets,” says Lynda. “The biggest difference was now he had a future. During the two years Mike was on the list, he never said, ‘When I go to high school or college...’ Now he looked at his future and he made goals.”
Those goals included attending Ohio State University. From 2002 to 2006, he studied finance at OSU and planned to start law school after graduation. But just six days before the ceremony, Mike was in a motorcycle accident. Chuck, Lynda and Mike’s sister Jessica rushed to the hospital, but physicians were unable to stop the bleeding and swelling in Mike’s brain.
More than a dozen friends gathered around his bed and told stories about their buddy’s tenacity and zest for life. Then a priest performed last rites, and Lynda asked to speak to a representative from the local organ procurement organization. Mike donated his heart, lungs, corneas, skin, tendons, ligaments and long bones.
“I know the joy of receiving and the bittersweet joy of giving,” says Lynda, who along with Jessica volunteers as a speaker for Lifebanc, northeast Ohio's organ procurement and tissue recovery agency. “Do I wish Mike didn’t have to give? Yes! But he’s not here, and the fact that he could give life to other people was such a passion for him.”
In January 2009, Lynda and Jessica honored Mike by representing Lifebanc at the Rose Parade, where Mike was one of 38 donors featured on a Donate Life float. They helped decorate the float and met dozens of donor families and recipients. “It was truly the most amazing, healing week I’ve ever encountered in my life,” says Lynda.
As one of only a handful of people in the United States who are both organ recipients and donors, Mike is special. But Lynda has known that for years. “I thank God every day for loaning him to me for 22 years,” she says. “He taught me so many lessons. I try to live my life as he did. Passionate. Selfless. And with no regrets."
You have the power to save lives by becoming a registered organ and tissue donor right now or by saying "yes" when renewing your driver license or state ID at the BMV.
