Sherrell Gay just celebrated her 50th wedding anniversary in January and she and her husband are planning to celebrate it big time in July by going on a cruise soon with their children and grandchildren.

Her life story was very different 30 years ago, however, it didn’t look like she would live long enough to see her 40th birthday.

When Gay was 38, she was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy and experienced sudden cardiac “death” at home three weeks later. Paramedics came to the home and performed CPR on her five times and used a defibrillator on her before taking her to a hospital.

“The doctor came out and told my family that I had a 5% chance of living and, if I did, I was going to be severely brain damaged,” Gay said. “Well, my family gathered together and we just let God work, and I was healed from that enough that I had to get a defibrillator.

“Over the next seven years, I had three more and that helped my heart that if it went into that bad rhythm, it would shock me so that my heart would straighten up and act right.”

Gay’s story highlights the importance of organ and tissue donors. You see, while the defibrillators helped her stay alive for a few years, the real reasons she is alive to celebrate five decades of marriage are the two heart transplants and one kidney transplant that she has received over the last 23 years.

Gay’s story is one of several that Peachtree Corners-based LifeLink of Georgia is highlighting in April, which is national Donate Life Month. Gay helped raise one of two Donate Life Month flags at LifeLink’s headquarters on Wednesday.

The month is designed to highlight the need for organ and tissue donors in Georgia and across the nation.

“It just gives us a focused effort to put all of our attention on celebrating donors and honor those recipients that get the gift of life,” LifeLink spokeswoman Tracy Ide, who is one of Gay’s daughters, said.

There are currently more than 3.8 million registered donors in Georgia and people who want to sign up to be an organ or tissue donor can do so by visiting mystorycontinues.com.

While thee are millions of registered donors in Georgia, there is more to determining where an organ can go than just a donor being on a registry. The donor and recipient have to be a match in order for the transplant to be successful.

And, how many people can be helped by a donor depends on how much they have agreed to donate for transplants when they die.

“Right now in Georgia over 3, 000 are waiting for an organ transplant,” Ide said. “Nationally, over 104,000 people are waiting.

“One organ and tissue donor can help up to 75 people. That’s for organs, eyes and tissue. So one organ donor can help up to eight people, but then for organs, eyes and tissue, it’ll be 75.

“It’s a huge legacy to know that 75 people can live because of something I decided to do.”

In Gay’s case, the defibrillators that were place in her heart in the 1990’s ended up being a temporary solution, but she kept having heart problems so her doctor recommended she get a heart transplant.

She underwent her first of two heart transplants in 2002, just six weeks after going on the transplant list.

Gay’s first heart donor was a 28-year-old man, named Ty, who had attended Savannah College of Art and Design and died after he had a brain aneurysm.

Five years after the transplant, she met her donor’s mother. As it turns out, Gay’s family and her donor’s family shared an old connection. Gay’s father and her donor’s mother grew up together in Wadley, Ga.

“Not only did we have a connection because I have her son’s heart, we have a connection because she knew my daddy,” Gay said.

Her body initially accepted the transplant without problems. In fact, she was able to be more active than she previously had been.

“I was sitting in a chair the next day, walking the halls the next day, discharged in a week and walking a mile in three weeks,” Gay said. “Life was very good. The day before the transplant, I could walk 5-feet and be totally exhausted, and when I woke up and took that first breath, I could walk and talk at the same time.”

Eventually, Gay’s body started to reject the new heart a decade after the transplant, however. She would need a second heart transplant, and this time she needed a kidney transplant because her kidney had failed during the nearly eight months that she spent in the hospital.

She spent 17 months waiting for this heart, but when a match was found, she got a heart and a new kidney from the same donor in 2012.

Gay doesn’t know as much about her second donor as she does about her first one because she hasn’t heard from his family. She knows he was 16-years-old when he died and that he was from south Georgia, but that is about it.

“It was very hard to accept that a 16-year-old gave me his heart and kidney because they’re supposed to go to young people, but there was no match around,” Gay said. “It only matched me.”

Gay now advocates for people to become organ donors as a way to honor the donors she received her transplants from.

She’s been a volunteer for LifeLink for 23 years, since her first transplant. She also attends the Transplant Games every two years. She says more donors are needed.

“If we could get more people to register, it would help so many people that are waiting,” Gay said.

But, it isn’t just transplant recipients who find special meaning in organ and tissue donations. The families of donors find some comfort in it as well.

Take Canton resident Leah Ozment for example. She is what is known as a “Donor Mom.” When her son, Thomas, died at the age of 19 in November 2022, all of his organs were donated.

More than two years after Thomas’ death, his mother continues to keep his memory alive. She’s found one way to do that by accepting Jason, the recipient of Thomas’ heart, into her family. He’s the only recipient of one of Thomas’ organs that she’s heard from.

For Ozment, part of her son is still alive through Jason.

“(Thomas’) heart is beating inside of Jason,” Ozment said. “When something good happens, I call Jason, we talk a lot, and I tell him and his heart reacts and that’s Thomas’ heart.

“Like Thomas’ heart still loves me, Jason loves me without a doubt and I just love knowing that Thomas’ heart is still reacting to and loving me. It’s just in another person.”

Like Gay, Ozment is an advocate for people becoming organ and tissue donors.

“Think about it from the perspective of humanity and what we as human beings can do to improve humanity in this world,” she said. “It’s an easy thing to do to save a life.”

For Gay, being the recipient of donated organs meant she got to live a life that once looked unlikely.

She’s gotten to see children graduate first from high school and then college. She got to attend their weddings and they’ve made her a grandmother three times over.

And, for that reason, the family’s upcoming cruise in July has a deeper meaning that just celebrating five decades of marriage with her husband.

“It’s going to be an amazing time to celebrate life together,” Gay said.

Source: https://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/local/peachtree-corners-based-organization-highlighting-need-for-organ-tissue-donors/article_b791447f-85e5-4878-a5fc-175a6732102c.html