As originally reported in The Age, Karen Carey, 57, and Connie Severino, 42, were called to the emergency department at St Vincent’s Hospital at the same time. Each were told, finally, they had a donor. Getting a donor is an incredible gift that people spend years on waiting lists for– waiting lists that they often never get off. Karen Carey recalls, “You can’t imagine what it’s like, getting that call.” She describes arriving at the emergency room in Sydney alone, her son and husband weren’t in the city, and she saw Connie, also anticipating big news. Connie describes how when she saw Karen, she feared they were competing for the same set of lungs. She describes thinking, “She seems like a lovely lady, but I want them!” She found out instead, Karen was there for the heart, and the two did not chat more this day. They each noticed each other: Karen commented on all the family around Connie, whom she thought were flustered. Connie noticed Karen alone, wondering why she didn’t have the same. Each went into their own intensive medical procedures, Connie receiving lungs, Karen a heart; both organs gifted from the same donor.
While they didn’t know each other, they knew they had organs that had once been part of one system, and already they felt a bond. Connie remembers her sister coming into the intensive care unit following the procedure and telling her that the woman from the waiting room was just a few beds down. They felt connected before they approached one another knowing they shared a body, both curious about the other until they eventually met in rehab. Karen describes feeling profoundly comfortable with Connie, that they have a bond beyond normal relations. Karen explained, “Do you know the Higgs boson experiment? Where they separated entangled protons? You can separate [subatomic particles] by hundreds of kilometres, and what you do to one affects the other. If there’s a linkage on that level, imagine how huge the connection must be when organs grow in the same body. I honestly feel like there is a very real, fundamental connection between us. It’s … weird.” Connie describes how they were always excited to see one another, chatting away at rehab, exercising, and meeting up for drinks or dinners around Sydney.
They together speculated who the donor was, both believing it to be a young man. Both feel the transplant gave them a piece of him not just physically but personality wise too. Connie describes being tougher, swearing, speaking up for herself. She says people around her noticed too. Karen thinks he was a farmer because after never having the slightest inkling towards gardening, she describes how she woke up from the surgery thinking about growing something immediately, later investing in a farm.
They describe that their diseases had different effects on their lives, so recovery looked slightly different. Karen had already had three husbands and children, she had lived a full adult life. Connie on the other hand, had always had her future shadowed by her cystic fibrosis that she didn’t know if she would survive. She had been sick for her entire life, always coughing and gasping for air. For the first time, she’s not coughing. She describes a strange guilt associated with recovery from having seen her friends lose their lives to the same illness that she got to recover from. She describes how it has given her more peace of mind having Karen who had also been suffering for years and had near death experiences, and now together, they got to have the transplant journey together. They describe a beautiful friendship, one they wish they could have had for decades.
