June 09, 2001|By Jeff Barker | Jeff Barker,SUN STAFF
"Hello. You don't know us personally, but we now have a personal connection. On Nov. 7, you became the recipient of our son's heart." 12/16/99
Georgette Ruth's son was dead, but his organs endured.
It's as if the wind had scattered the seeds of a dandelion: His lungs ended up in a Baltimore executive, his liver went to a Pennsylvania widow, and his pancreas and a kidney were transplanted into a diabetic college student from Dundalk who found soon afterward that he no longer needed insulin therapy.
But it is the recipient of her son's heart who most intrigued Ruth, a nurse from Mount Airy. Chad Ruth, 21, a registered organ donor, died in a head-on car crash in Carroll County on Nov. 6, 1999.
Her fixation spoke to the vast symbolic power of the heart. She couldn't quite close the book on her son's accident until she saw the person in whom his heart beats.
Meetings between donor families and the bearers of transplanted hearts are rare, occurring in less than 5 percent of Maryland cases. Often, the feelings surrounding the procedure are simply too raw or overpowering, and it's easier for the parties to keep their distance.
In Ruth's case, she knew the recipient was a golf pro from Baltimore County, but that knowledge wasn't enough.
So she and her ex-husband carefully crafted their December letter, which a transplant advocacy group agreed to forward to this most intimate of strangers.
"It is difficult to know exactly what to say to you at this time so I will speak from my heart. We would like to tell you something about our son Chad. ... "
It would be the beginning of an extraordinary relationship.
Dizzy spells
Steve Jones thought he had a persistent winter cold. An assistant golf pro at the Hillendale Country Club, his job was teaching - but also socializing with members.
His bronchitis-like symptoms, including a shortness of breath, were straining his normally affable style, as well his swing.
But he couldn't have anticipated his 1997 diagnosis: cardiomyopathy, in which the heart can't pump blood efficiently.
Soon to come were blackouts and palpitations. Once, while helping a member pick out a pair of golf shoes, he became so dizzy that he had to grab a shirt display rack to keep from falling.
And it would only get worse. His future would rest with a possible transplant, but the odds weren't in his favor.
Jones knew the statistics: Sixteen people die every day awaiting organ transplants. There were already more than 3,500 on the national waiting list for a heart when he joined it, including about 70 from his hospital, Johns Hopkins. Last year, 26 heart transplants were conducted in Maryland.
Since hearts cannot survive long in transit, he'd probably need a local donor. "I knew that the chances weren't very good," he says now.
He was 37, married to a woman he'd known since high school, and the father of a 1-year-old son he feared would never know him.
The doctors said he could probably survive without a transplant for three to five years.
After that, no promises.
A crashed Camaro
It was late on a Saturday night, and Clark Creamer, 33, was heading home to Westminster from a blind date.
The outing had been arranged by Z104, an FM station in suburban Washington, as part of its "Fridate" feature for singles. A couple goes out for dinner and calls in Monday to describe how it went.
But, as the station's listeners soon learned, Creamer had been killed - his car struck head on by another vehicle that seemed to have gone out of control on a road in Mount Airy.
It was Chad Ruth's Camaro, and he was in the passenger seat. His mother would say later that he had been drinking and the keys ended up in the hands of a friend, who survived the crash with minor injuries and - following an investigation - wasn't prosecuted.
Georgette Ruth didn't know it until just before her son died of severe head trauma, but Chad had decided to be an organ donor when he first got his driver's license.
He was in the minority. In Maryland, 37 percent of licenses or photo ID cards issued by the Motor Vehicle Administration express consent for organ transfers at their bearer's death - up from 25 percent four years ago.
His friends said Chad had called them wimps because they weren't prospective donors.
This anecdote was among the first things that strong-willed Georgette Ruth, who works in a small obstetrics and gynecology practice, wanted the heart recipient to hear about her eldest son after he died.
Her letter said that Chad had been a fun-loving kid with a pleasant smile, that he had helped manage the dining room at an assisted-living facility for seniors, and had hoped to become a helicopter pilot.
"When he was young, I often said he was like Radar O'Reilly in the series M*A*S*H. He could hear the sound of a helicopter coming long before others." 12/16/99
Sudden fortune
When Steve Jones awoke in the hospital, he was full of tubes. A lung had collapsed during transplant surgery, and surgeons had inserted a ventilator so he could breathe.
