One Thursday, Terry Meier, a healthy 34-year-old mother of three, came down with a high fever. And on Sunday, her heart stopped.
A fluke case of spinal meningitis destroyed the powerful muscles in her heart almost overnight. For 65 days, a machine kept the blood flowing throughout her body, until a heart transplant saved her rapidly failing organs — and her life.
Four years later, the Millbrae resident shuttles her kids around like any other mom. The difference is that between carpools, she speaks regularly to groups about the fact that the heart beating inside her wired-together ribs is not the organ she was born with.
She will be telling her story Friday, Nov. 8, at Burlingame’s Peninsula Temple Sholom as part of “National Donor Sabbath,” a program sponsored by the California Transplant Donor Network. That week, religious leaders of all faiths will be encouraging their congregations to think about organ and tissue donation.
“We want to raise people’s consciousness and awareness, to encourage people to say, `Yes, this is a Jewish mitzvah; I want to make sure my organs are donated,'” says Rabbi Andrew Straus.
Meier, one of five Peninsula Temple Sholom congregants to receive a transplant in the last few years, can’t donate organs herself because of the medications she takes to keep her heart from rejecting. She does plan, however, to donate her body to science for research on transplantation. Her tendons, corneas, skin and even bones — which are often used to help treat cancer patients — will also be available for use.
“Anything they want,” jokes Meier, “they got it. I’m dead, I don’t care.”
Meier’s relationship to her body was forever altered on the day she went into cardiac arrest. For an instant, she hovered between life and death, and like many others who have had near-death experiences, she recalls floating above her body, seeing herself from above.
“When my soul left my body, I realized they were separate. My body is just organs in a functioning house. My soul goes on,” she says.
Just a month before the ecumenical National Donor Sabbath, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations published and distributed a pamphlet encouraging organ donation.
“Jewish tradition teaches that we are partners with God in continuing and sustaining the daily miracles of creation. Organ and tissue donation are an extension of this partnership,” reads the pamphlet.
Most branches of Judaism concur, says Straus. The concept of saving a life, p’kuach nefesh, supercedes the sanctity of the body, the Jewish mandate that corpses be buried intact.
“You should do whatever you can actively do to save a life,” Straus adds.
At the Shabbat service, congregants will be encouraged not only to affix the pink donor sticker to their driver’s licenses, but also, more importantly, to discuss organ donation with their families, who will ultimately be asked to make that decision.
Across the country, almost 50,000 people are currently waiting for organ transplants. In 1995, 3,098 transplant candidates — one person every three hours — died awaiting transplantation, according to the California Transplant Donor Network.
Meier’s new heart, from a 39-year-old Fresno woman whose name she doesn’t know, has given her the chance to see her children grow up. She is also going back to school to study speech and biology so that she can more effectively answer questions from the public about organ donation.
“I tell them, `Learn the facts, and tell your family if you want to be a donor,'” Meier says.
The facts often come out in answers to frequently asked questions: Yes, she has a large scar from her sternum to her waist. No, the quality of hospital care is not lessened if the patient is a known donor. No, the body is not mutilated; open-casket funerals are still possible. Yes, she can still run and do aerobics, as long as she has adequate time to warm up her new organ.
How does it feel to have another woman’s heart?
“It’s really weird, but this heart feels like it’s my own,” says Meier. “Maybe that’s why I’m doing so well.”