Here’s an unusual organ donor story: a woman, blind her whole life, is able to provide the gift of sight to someone else.
Marilyn Tucci is legally blind. She has been her whole life. But it has never stopped her, even after her life partner, her husband, john, died of sudden cardiac arrest in her arms.
It was then she made a gift that she herself could never receive, even from the man who loved her.
“I can’t see things that I’d like to see, including myself my children, by grandchildren, friends the world around with me,” says Marilyn. “The gift of sight the gift of life, these are things that if I was sighted I wouldn’t even be thinking about these things.”
“There is a special wonder to be able to see and for any of us to think of what our life would be like not to see and to give that gift back to someone else is very special,” says Patricial Dahl, CEO of the Eye Bank for Sight Restoration.
“John and I were soul mates,” recalls Marilyn. “We both have the same birthday, now it’s a little sad for me not being able to share it with him, we just had a great life together. He had a heart condition for 18 years; he had two triple bypasses ten heart attacks and a stent that didn’t work, so to me he was a walking miracle.”
Elaine Berg, President and CEO of the New York Organ Donor Network, says, “The people on the waiting list for the last ten years in 1996 there were only 50,000. At the end of 2005 there were 91,000 people waiting for organs in the U.S. This is the number of transplants which is going up but really the key here is the number of organ donors after death and this has only increased from 5,400 in ‘96 to 7,500 in 2005. So the supply of organs if you will is remaining fairly flat and the need is increasing. Part of the reason for this is organ donation is so successful that more and more people are on the waiting list. And what we really need to work on is getting the number of organ donors up.”
Marilyn recalls, “We both turned to each other, and said when we die we’re going to donate our organs. When my husband did pass away, my family and I discussed donating his corneas, and two people got the gift of sight one was a 43 year old man and one was 75 year old woman.”
The man who loved her so--unable to give his wife sight--was able to do so for others.
“His loss can never be replaced. But the fact that two people got a part of him that his tissue a part of his is living on, not only in his children and grandchildren but in these two people who we don’t know, I just felt good about it,” says Marilyn.
Marilyn now volunteers for the New York Organ Donor Network, trying to encourage others to sign up to be organ donors.
For more information please go to www.donatelifeny.org
