Are They Dead Yet?

At this very moment I’m listening to Boobah, typing, answering emails and fielding phone calls. And listening to my husband snore. Because, at 0800 we had our umpteenth fight on why my job sucks and how can he get any sleep with the phone ringing all night and the baby teething and UGH! At least I got to catnap on the couch, he says. I respond by saying in a few hours time, he’ll be back to sleep and I’ll still be hard at work and watching the baby. “No way!” Says he, “I can’t get back to sleep after all that.” And here we are. I fight the urge to smother him.

I’m a transplant coordinator and I work with dead people. I’m the person you don’t want to see in the ICU. Rumors that vultures circle my head are greatly exaggerated. However, if you or someone you love is waiting for an organ, I’m you best ally. Mostly my job involves being on call and responding to hospitals, assessing patients that are brain dead to see if they’re suitable to be organ donors and then asking the family if they want to donate. It’s a little stressful.

Every three weeks I get rotated on triage, which means that I get to stay at home with my phone and oversee 5 other transplant coordinators. It’s all the joy of working as a mom and wife combined with the work of being a coordinator. At least I can stay in my jammies. I want to say to my surgeons, “Imagine you’re doing a liver resection in your living room and your kids come in fighting. He took my ball! She started it! And you say, ‘Now, kids, remember we use our indoor voice when Daddy’s operating.’”

So far this morning we’ve finished up one OR and are going to be starting another this evening. I’m fielding complaints from different people I can’t see and wish I couldn’t hear. One doctor didn’t fill out the paperwork right and I get on the phone to see if another one can deal with it. Another person complains that I forgot to call a cardiologist as I’m balancing a crying baby on my hip and trying to open a juice box. “Oh, is that Little Sally? She sounds cwanky.” My child’s first sentence is likely to be “Send him to the morgue and get out of there.”

I get another call from a hospital that’s known to be, um, well let’s just say it’s not Johns Hopkins. The patient is young, her heart stopped this morning from blood loss and she appears to be brain dead. I ask the nurse some basic questions, like what’s her blood pressure. She’s not sure. I try another tack. Is she going to make it upstairs to the ICU? “Well,” she says, “if she does, she’s not going to get any better.” I fight the urge to say “No S*&T! That’s why I get called.” I know she’s not gonna be skipping out of there anytime soon, what with the brain death and all. I say bluntly, “Is she dead yet? Does she still have a pulse?” I send out a coordinator to see what’s going on.

I look over at the baby. She’s watching Curious George with something akin to rapture. She loves that monkey. I’ve spent some serious moments this morning wondering if I’m nuts for trying to juggle this job and a baby. I’ll figure it out after Curious George is over. Or else we’ll take a nap.

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