Bothell mother helps launch Decision to Donate campaign

Bothell’s Marta Baldwin said her son, Cole, 12, was sitting on the couch doing his homework.

“An hour later, he was unconscious,” Baldwin said.

At first, emergency surgery seemed to have saved Cole from the brain aneurysm he had suffered in March 2007. In the end, he did not recover.

“It all happened very quickly,” his mother said, adding the family also quickly made the decision to donate Cole’s organs, a decision that so far has changed the lives of five people.

In Seattle, though he is not anything like a filmmaker by trade, Massimo Backus spent three years chronicling the decision of his father, John Backus, to donate a kidney to an ill friend in 2005.

“Health is one of the greatest gifts anybody can give anybody,” Massimo Backus said.

Also captured on video, the Baldwin’s story and Backus’ film were two of the highlights of the launch of the Decision to Donate campaign, sponsored by Donate Life Today and several other local hospitals and medical centers.

“These films capture the essence of donation, which is total selflessness,” said Megan Erwin, executive director of Donate Life Today.

Donate Life’s awareness campaign is aimed, of course, at encouraging organ donation, including saying “yes” to the organ-donation question asked of every state resident as they obtain or renew a driver’s license.

Held last Thursday at Seattle’s McCaw Hall, the event featured the local debut of Backus’ short film on his father, which only recently took the top prize at the first Donate Life Hollywood Film Festival held in June. The film follows John Backus and kidney recipient Larry Hietpas over the course of three years, from before the transplant to one year later.

“I’m not sure if pride covers it,” Backus said of his feelings regarding his father’s decision to become a live organ donor. “I am humbled by his generosity in this and I am awed by the impact of this.”

He said he knows the film already has influenced families to donate organs from loved ones and helped convince others to become registered potential donors.

For the Baldwins, Marta said the decision to donate Cole’s organs came easily, even as the family suffered through probably the worst pain possible.

“We asked ourselves, ‘Would Cole want to help people?’” Baldwin said. Reflecting on what she said was her son’s nature, the answer was obvious.

Doctors harvested Cole’s heart, lungs, corneas and kidneys, along with taking tissue samples.

“We don’t regret it at all to this day,” Baldwin said, adding that just the opposite is true. After writing letters to the recipients of Cole’s organs, Baldwin became close to the 19-year-old local girl, identified only as Annie, who received Cole’s liver.

“Losing a child has to be very close to the most devastating thing that can happen to a person,” Baldwin said. “You feel like your heart has been ripped from your chest.”

Baldwin said she feared for the future and felt as if she would never be happy again. When she met Annie, Baldwin said her heart “filled with happiness.”

“She is so deserving … It lights me up to be around her.”

Like Baldwin, the young lady is now an advocate for organ donation and the two have worked and spoke publicly together.

Baldwin also has met the 60-year-old woman who received her son’s lungs. Baldwin said the woman used to be tethered to an oxygen tank and had to stay within range of a hospital in case of emergency.

“Now she goes wherever she wants to go,” Baldwin said. “She bought a new car and she’s even played golf.”

Bellevue’s Nicholas Metz was another speaker at the Seattle event. Just five days before she died unexpectedly, like Cole, of a brain aneurysm, his wife said “OK” to being a donor while renewing her driver’s license. Including persons aided by tissue and ligament samples taken from his wife, Metz said that decision had helped some 26 people. Cole Baldwin may end up directly helping a few more people, as well. As the technology exists to preserve them, Cole’s corneas are still in an eye bank awaiting use.

Marta Baldwin said that there are a lot of unfortunate myths surrounding organ donation. For one thing, Baldwin said the doctors who work in emergency rooms and the medical teams that harvest organs are separate entities.

“No doctor is going to let a person die to collect organs,” Baldwin said.

She asks those who are simply squeamish about organ donation to ask themselves if they would want an organ to be available if they or a loved one were in need. Baldwin feels the obvious answer to that question should make any decision on donating an easy one.

For more information on the Decision to Donate campaign, visit www.decisiontodonate.com.