April is National Donate Life Month, and on Wednesday we were able to share Hannah’s Story at Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee, at their request, through Versiti. This is the hospital where we spent our last week with Hannah and held her honor walk. It was a very special opportunity, but being there and speaking was also hard. There is so much emotion wrapped up in the memory of that week! As we turned off the freeway and saw the hospital and the building where Hannah’s room was, we began reliving those days. There is so much mixed emotion wrapped up in those memories. The love and care that we and Hannah received was very personal and special as the doctors and nurses suffered along with us, but we also lost Hannah there that week too! It’s an understatement to say that it was, “The best of times and the worst of times!”
Anyway, during National Donate Life Month, hospitals and other organizations hold special flag raising ceremonies, and that’s what we were there to participate in. The flag being raised is the Donate Life flag. The memorial began at 1:00, then the flag was raised at 1:08. This time was chosen to remind us all that 1 Gift of Life can save up to 8 people. After the flag was up, there was a fourteen second moment of silence in honor and support of the 1,400 people in Wisconsin who are waiting on the organ donation transplant list to receive their Gift of Life. Next, the President of Froedtert, Austin Reeder, spoke, then a recipient named John spoke. He shared about his journey as a Milwaukee police officer and then about his struggle as he became a liver recipient, and then later a kidney recipient. After him I spoke. Janean held the microphone and I fought back the emotions as everyone waited for me to begin. This was much harder than speaking at the capital because of all those memories! It took a minute to be able to start, but eventually I began reading Hannah’s Story. I expressed appreciation for Froedtert, Versiti, and Organ Donation for their part in Hannah’s Story. After we were done, we were given a Donate Life flag that had been flown, in honor of Hannah.
There were about seventy people, I’d guess, and there were three news stations too (Channels 58, 6, and 12). They all recorded the event, but only Channel 12 interviewed us afterwards. Both 58 link here and 6 link here posted their work, but unfortunately, we have not been able to find Channel 12’s story yet, of course. Well, you can watch the news links that I posted, or you can read my speech down below, at the end of the post.
We were hoping to meet up with Dr. Charlie and Nurse Hannah, but they were not able to come. (These jobs don’t allow much time for breaks.) We did text with both of them and, obviously, they were disappointed that they couldn’t make it, but Hannah did send us a picture of a window that she painted at the hospital for National Donate Life Month.
One of the med flight helicopters that we saw at WEMSA flew in and out twice while we were there and I was able to get a picture of it as it passed overhead, between the flags. It struck me that there are so many people involved in saving lives on a daily basis, but we all do it in different ways.
We are blessed.
P.S. We can’t do this alone. If you would like to donate to Hannah Helps:
PayPal: paypal.com/us/fundraiser/charity/5609126
Venmo: venmo.com/u/hannahhelps19
Your support is needed and greatly appreciated!
Thank You!
My speech:
The life of our daughter Hannah was marked by determination, hard work, and a love for education. She was a virtual school student with a life’s dream of going to college, and once she turned sixteen, she began working hard to achieve that dream. Hannah would wake up early, drink a cup of hot chocolate as she did her schoolwork for a couple hours, then go to work as a waitress or CSM at Hobby Lobby, then she would come back home to complete her assignments while she drank another cup of hot chocolate. She took dual enrollment classes in her last two years of high school and also during her summer and Christmas breaks. Hannah loved the education, the work, and the personal responsibility. Last school year, her dream came true as she became an on-campus dorm student for the first time. She majored in Secondary English Education and chose Teaching English as a Second Language as her minor. Because of those prior efforts in school and at work, she started her first year on campus as a second semester sophomore with enough money saved to pay for her full four-year education!
Hannah loved college life, but the night after her nineteenth birthday, she swallowed just one bite of a gluten-free brownie that was given to her by a friend as they met to study in the library. Later we learned that it contained roasted peanut flour, which made the peanut undetectable. We knew that Hannah had a peanut allergy, but it had never been a big deal. We had only encountered it twice in her life, at ages three and six. Each time these episodes were mild and brief, and we took her to an allergist, and there she received her first EpiPens. Over the next thirteen years she became an adult, and we never had any issue with her allergy. BUT, that Monday night, after she realized that something was wrong, she ran back to her dorm, threw up, and called us to come and be with her. She did not take her epinephrine though because she felt that she was “OK.”
We kept her on the phone as we raced to her side, and her reaction seemed to be over with by the time that we arrived in Watertown forty-five minutes later. But the situation took a drastic turn when she laid down to rest. At that point, she began to have sudden difficulty breathing, and then she passed out as she was climbing out of bed. We gave her epinephrine and called 911 immediately. I picked her up like a big limp rag doll and carried her outside to the arriving ambulance. I briefly sat her on my knee, facing me. I had one arm behind her back and the other hand at the base of her head, to hold it up. It was the most helpless feeling that a parent could ever have! As I looked at her lifeless face, only inches from mine, I thought, “Is this really happening!? Is Hannah dying in my arms!?” All I could do was to tell her that we were there, that we loved her, and that it would be “OK.” After I handed her off to the EMT’s, they took her quickly into the ambulance, but once inside, her heart stopped for several minutes. They were able to restart it, but her blood oxygen level remained dangerously low, and then for the next two and a half hours the doctors at the hospital tried to figure out WHY it was so low. Shortly after midnight they found that her right lung had collapsed. They quickly reinflated it and then she was transferred here to Froedtert.
At six in the morning, we got our first real update on her condition. They were keeping her alive, but there was extensive brain damage! It didn’t look good, but only time would tell how bad it really was…
Here at Froedtert we found an amazing family of doctors and nurses. Our first nurse, also named Hannah, rearranged her work schedule and days off so that she could be with us the whole time. Another nurse, Jackie, used her day off to make our ICU room feel more like home. She bought a blanket, a teddy bear, and Christmas decorations, and then she came back to our room to decorate it with nurse Hannah! Other nurses, Tayor and Tess, helped us through the long nights, and the doctors worked tirelessly, around the clock, to give Hannah’s body “the best chance possible to heal.” Dr. Charlie took extra time to make sure that all our questions were answered and even the questions of our boys and other family! They all cared for Hannah and for us with the love and attention that they would have given to their own loved ones or even to themselves!
Like most people, I had heard about organ donation, but it was never something that I seriously considered. It’s not really a situation that anyone expects to be in, but on our second day, as we waited in ICU, I got a text from my cousin. He was at Froedtert too, but for an appointment of his own, and he asked to meet with me. He was a big, tall, strong guy and someone who I always respected, but as I walked into the cafeteria that afternoon, I saw that things had changed drastically. He was in a wheelchair, on oxygen, and had difficulty standing. He told me about the sudden onset of his lung condition and that he needed a double-lung transplant. His only hope was organ donation! As I talked with him and his wife, and then thought about their family, God helped me see the other side of organ donation. After our conversation, I shared these things with Janean, and we tucked those thoughts away in the back of our minds while we waited and prayed for Hannah’s recovery.
As we stayed by her side, we longed for her eyes to open, but Hannah never came back to us that week. Then late on Friday night, her heart began to slow way down from the swelling of her brain. More testing needed to be done, and as we waited in the darkness of that hospital room, realizing that we could be near the end of her life, Janean asked, “How are we ever going to survive this?” The response that God put in my mind was, “We need to Do Right: We will Breathe, Take small steps, and Keep moving forward.” Moments later, when we saw the doctor rolling a chair in to talk to us, we already knew what he was going to say… He was about in tears as he told us the obvious truth of the situation. She was about to die and there was no more hope! It was at that point that we chose organ donation for our daughter.
So, on Sunday November 3rd we celebrated Hannah’s nineteenth birthday and one week later on Sunday November 10th, we held her honor walk here, at Froedtert, and said our final goodbyes outside the operating room doors on the 4th floor. At 3:57 our daughter’s life ended, but the lives of four recipients began again, two more received the gift of sight, and many more have been impacted by her life and our decision to donate! Now, in her memory, we have started a nonprofit called Hannah Helps, to raise awareness and support for others in the areas of allergies, organ donation, faith, and loss.
Since then, we have been able to meet two of our recipients. One was living on dialysis while taking care of her husband, as he battled cancer. Because of Hannah’s Gift of Life, he was able to see her life saved, and she was able to be with him, a short time later, as he lost his battle with the cancer. Our other recipient was thirty-nine and didn’t know if she would even have a future. When we were first able to communicate through Versiti, her first and only question was, “Did Hannah like hot chocolate?” We told her “yes” and explained her study habits. She said, “I thought so. When I woke up from the donation, hot chocolate was the first thing that I NEEDED.” She then explained that she had come here from the Philippines as a young girl and, although she had hot chocolate before, it was not something that she cared for. She loved coffee, but since she received Hannah’s pancreas and a kidney, she had been drinking hot chocolate daily and knew that she hadn’t just received the Gift of Life, but that she had received a special part of who Hannah was too.
Today we thank Froedert for the love, support, and medical excellence that they gave Hannah and us that week. They were the “family” that we needed during that time, and we will always be grateful! We thank Versiti for their part in making this all possible. From volunteers meeting us in the middle of the night that Friday, to our ability to be here today, sharing Hannah’s Story with you, Versiti has been available and supportive every step of the way. Finally, we thank organ donation for giving us the ability to give others the Gift of Life through Hannah’s tragedy, and for its ability for us, as donor family, to add a silver lining on to a really dark cloud in our lives. Just a few hours before that tragic bite of brownie, Hannah told a friend that she wanted God to use her life in an effective and meaningful way. Through her life and now her passing, He has been doing that very thing. Froedtert, Versiti, and Organ Donation each have been instrumental in empowering us to share Hannah’s Story, and to give others, The Gift of Life.Thank You
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