Gabe Semenza/ Victoria Advocate

On a March night in 2001, Jim Mooney called his wife in Victoria from a lonely hospital room and told her he wanted to die.

Crying and depressed, still waiting after three years for a heart transplant - the last year confined to his hospital room - he ended the conversation and reached for his Bible.

He knew the statistics: 70 people in the United States receive an organ transplant daily, yet his chances of receiving a fit heart were slim. And he knew 17 people die daily because of organ shortages.

When he opened his Bible, the 49-year-old man said it opened to Psalms. He then read passages he believes God intended for him to read.

From his Victoria home recently, Mooney reached again for that Bible, which lay closed on a coffee table near his recliner. "He was taking care of us, letting us know not to worry," he said, clutching the book and resting it in his lap.

The words he read that scary night in 2001 calmed his anxieties, and he slept. A few hours later, nurses awoke him. They finally had a heart large enough to support his 6-foot-3-inch, 210-pound frame.

Mooney's wife, Linda, said that a 300-pound, 30-year-old man was in a motorcycle accident, and doctors kept the brain dead man on a ventilator long enough that six organs were eventually recovered from him. Mooney received his heart transplant later that day.

"There is so much misunderstanding about the whole organ-donation process,"
Mooney said. "It's a tough decision for families to make at the time of losing a family member. That's why it's so important the organ donors discuss their intentions with their families long before the need arises."

Today, more than 84,000 people nationwide and 5,000 in Texas are on the transplant waiting list. A name is added to the list every few minutes, said Pam Silvestri, public affairs director of Southwest Transplant Alliance, a Dallas-based organ-donation agency.

"It doesn't take as much as most people think to become a donor," Silvestri said in a telephone conversation. "Simply tell your family your wishes. It may be a tough discussion to have, but unless you talk to your family, your wishes may not be carried out."

Silvestri said there was a 28 percent increase in Texas organ donations from 2002 to 2003, while the nation had a 4.3 percent increase, the highest since 1998. The number of people who died awaiting a transplant in 2003 fell to 5,968 after exceeding 6,000 each year since 1999.

"Not all of us will be in a position to become donors. Potential organ donors must die in a hospital on a ventilator," she said. "Only 12,000 to 15,000 people are potential donors in our country each year."

Those numbers are significantly less than the number of potential recipients awaiting a transplant, she added. "We have the doctors. We have the technology. We just don't have the organs. Medical professionals can't do anything to save the lives of those on the waiting list without human beings helping each other."

Tanisha King was one of those who chose to help others. She was a 22-year-old Goliad woman who died in a car wreck on April 1 while driving to her job as a nurse at Citizens Medical Center.

King's parents knew she wanted to be a donor, so they consented when doctors asked them about it.

"Her and I had talked about her job, and the different things that went on at the hospital," said the young woman's mother, Karen King. "We both said if anything ever happened to either one of us, we wanted to donate our organs."

The mother broke into tears, though, when she learned for the first time Thursday that her daughter's heart was donated for valves, that her liver saved a 57-year-old Texas man, that her right kidney saved a 49-year-old California man and that her left kidney saved a 24-year-old New Jersey man.

"I really don't know what to say," she said, apologizing for her tears. "I'm happy for those people. I'm glad she helped them out since she can't be here with us. I have no regrets about that decision."

She said Tanisha was very outgoing, very lively and very unselfish.

"The way I look at it, if I were in the position that some people are in, and if they have a grown person that needs an organ, I would like to think it's available. I know how grateful I would have been if there would have been any way my daughter could have lived ... if they could have saved my daughter's life."

Tim DeWeese, a 60-year-old Irving man, is waiting for somebody to save his life. He was put on the liver-transplant waiting list in January.

"I had hepatitis C about two years ago, and it's damaged my liver," DeWeese said in a telephone interview Friday. He said treatment for the hepatitis has taxed his body and strength. "It took everything out of me."

DeWeese also said that although his condition is not life threatening today, "I can go bad at any moment. It's really unpredictable."

Then DeWeese broke into tears. "It can be scary, and I think for a lot of people it is," he said. "I would say anything can happen at any time."

A registered organ donor himself, DeWeese pleaded for other people to do the same. "You may need an organ yourself. The greatest gift that you can possibly give somebody is an organ. I don't think there's any greater gift because that organ is life. You give the gift of life."

The toughest aspect of life for DeWeese since being put on the waiting list has been to keep a positive attitude, which he said he can't always maintain"because sometimes you just don't feel like it. It's a lack of knowing, a lack of really being to be able to plan my life."

Mooney knows all about the restricted life awaiting a transplant. Like DeWeese, Mooney was equipped with a beeper and was told not to go beyond a certain geographical area - in case an organ became available.

Today, Mooney and his heart are doing well, and he's able to enjoy gardening and carpentry again. He also spends at least 40 hours a week working as a health care financial consultant.

"It's like night and day," he said. "I'm doing anything I want to do. Thanks to organ donation, I am still around to see my kids graduate from high school and college, and get married. Thanks to God's grace, a very special family donated the organs of their loved one. That one person affected six people that day. If you decide to be an organ donor, you better tell your family. The decision is all up to the family."