Southwest Transplant Alliance

TEXAS CITY — On a cool, fall-like day at a Houston hospital, Pluria Hayes proposed to his wife. Eight years later, he faced the life-altering decision of whether to donate her organs to save the lives of two others.

Carol Hayes, 45, died Nov. 8 of an aneurysm after a week of treatment at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.

Little did Hayes know his wife would become one of the roughly 15,000 potential organ donors nationwide who can give strangers a second lease on life.

Hayes, 36, a civil engineer for the Air National Guard, said he met his wife at her supply-office job at Memorial Herman Hospital.

“I was walking down the hall with six tacos, and she said, ‘Give me a taco,’” Hayes said. “I owe Taco Bell a whole lot. If I’d not had those tacos in my hand, my wife would have walked right past me.”

Hayes invited her to lunch, and they met a few weeks later on a beautiful day in September 1998 under a tree in the hospital’s courtyard.

“The first time we had lunch, I asked her to marry me,” Hayes said. “A pigeon doo-dooed on my shirt. I was so embarrassed. She laughed but knew by the look on my face that I was serious. On our second lunch I asked her again, and she didn’t respond.”

Hayes asked again around Christmas.

“I said, ‘I’m not going to ask anymore,’” he said. “I asked for 90 days and then told her she could change her mind. It’s been eight years ... I used to joke every now and then, asking her, ‘Are my 90 days up?’ We only dated nine months before we were married.”

Carol Hayes, who lived with her husband in Texas City, was an avid reader and a deeply religious and spiritual woman. After 12 years at Memorial Herman, she work for a blood-donor center.

On Oct. 30, Carol Hayes became sick and complained to her husband that she had a sharp pain in her head.

“She took off her glasses, laid in bed and said she’d be OK,” Hayes said. “I came home Tuesday afternoon and found her still in bed resting. Tuesday night she started spiraling. She fell out in my arms.”

She was rushed to Mainland Medical Center and taken to the University of Texas Medical Branch, Hayes said.

“She had surgery on Wednesday, Halloween night,” he said. “She was on her way to a speedy recovery ... but her pressure went up, and she died Nov. 8.”

Because his wife died on a ventilator, an organ-donation organization approached Hayes and asked if he would like to potentially help save the lives of others.

Pam Silvestri, a spokeswoman for Southwest Transplant Alliance in Dallas, said only 1 percent of the people in the United States die on ventilators.

“When they pass away on ventilators, we go to the hospital and ask the family if they would be willing to donate organs,” Silvestri said. “Our staff talked to him to help him make the best decision for his family.”

The couple discussed donating their organs over the years, Hayes said, but he asked for time to decide.

“There was a 24-hour time limit,” he said. “At first I said no. Then I read through some pamphlets, and the next morning I spoke with my sister-in-law.”

Saying no would have been a selfish act, he said.

Silvestri said about 20,000 people nationwide die on ventilators, and nearly 70 percent of their families agree to donation. Only 15,000 of those are suitable donors, she said.

“Usually they didn’t know what they wanted,” Silvestri said. “Or they just can’t make a decision at a traumatic time like that.”

Silvestri said she didn’t know the names of Carol Hayes’ transplant recipients, but knew one transplant took place in Dallas and the other in Galveston.

Hayes said he made the right decision.

“You have to make the best of life on Earth while you’ve got the chance,” he said. “It must have been a blessing for some family member to see their (loved one) recover and live.”

Hayes is survived by three children, Nelson Eaglin, 27; Amber Tate, 18; and Rashon Hayes, 12.

+++

On the Web

www.organ.org