By Amanda Estes
Staff Writer
When she answered the planning office telephone in Cape Elizabeth Town Hall, Hiromi Dolliver said she had no idea why any one would want to interview her.
As the planning board secretary, she was accustomed to fielding questions about meeting minutes, but she was caught off guard by the news Gov. John Baldacci had honored her and four other Maine residents by issuing a proclamation naming Dec. 3, 2007 Organ Donor Awareness Day.
As December came to a close, however, Dolliver had the governor’s proclamation within her South Portland home. A volunteer with the New England Organ Bank for nearly six years, Dolliver is an advocate for organ and tissue donation because she knows first hand what it means to give the gift of life.
On Aug. 30, 2002, Dolliver was home with a bad back when she received a call from a doctor at a Boston area psychiatric hospital where her 35-year-old daughter, Nancy Webster, was a patient.   
“He told me she had made a suicide attempt, a very serious suicide attempt, and they were headed for [Massachusetts General Hospital] and they were trying to revive her and it didn’t look very good,” Dolliver says.
Because of her back pain, Dolliver was unable to make it to the hospital. A nurse in the cardiac intensive care unit kept her updated, but didn’t give her much hope that her daughter would survive. The doctors were able to get Webster’s heart pumping again, but she was on a respirator and was unconscious and did not respond to any outside stimuli, Dolliver says.
When she received a call from a nurse at the New England Organ Bank, who wanted to know if she would consider organ donation, Dolliver answered in the affirmative. Although she and her daughter had never discussed the issue because she was in and out of psychiatric hospitals for the last 16 years of her life, Dolliver says she didn’t hesitate to say yes to donation.
“She made numerous suicide attempts,” Dolliver says. “She didn’t want to live. It’s as simple and as complicated as that.”
Several days after entering the hospital, Dolliver says her daughter was declared brain dead. The New England Organ Bank was able to use her heart, liver and both of her kidneys.  
Webster’s liver and a kidney were donated to a young widow with two teenage children and her other kidney was donated to a young man who also had children, Dolliver says.
“I had the sense we had affected an enormous number of lives besides the recipients themselves,” she says.
And the recipient of her daughter’s heart?
“I know her heart’s still working fine because we know the young man,” she says with a smile.
Initially, Dolliver only knew a few basic details about Tu Nguyen, the now 35-year-old man who received her daughter’s heart. Dolliver says Nguyen had an enlarged heart and on two occasions had almost died while in the hospital that summer.
About a month after the transplant, his family wrote to Dolliver and her husband, Daniel Dolliver, and they started corresponding back and forth through the organ bank. After about six or seven months, both sides expressed the desire to meet.
They met at the New England Organ Bank headquarters in Newton, Massachusetts the day before Mother’s Day.
“I don’t know that there’s any preparation,” Dolliver says with a big laugh, of the days that preceded the event. “Life and death comes at you when you’re not planning for it to happen.”
Dolliver says it was a very emotional experience with her and her husband meeting Nguyen and members of his family including his parents, sister and brother-in-law.
Nguyen, who lives in the Boston area, is a part-time student studying computer technology and plans to graduate in May, Dolliver says.
She points out a photo in her living room, taken last year, of her and her husband with Nguyen. For the past several years, on Memorial Day weekend, Nguyen and members of his family have come to Maine to visit with the Dollivers and place flowers on Webster’s grave.
“I always think it’s easy to see how the recipient gains from an organ donation – but I don’t think it’s widely understood how the donor family is blessed,” Dolliver says.  “If we hadn’t done the donation, [Webster’s] story would have ended on Aug. 30, 2002 and instead it’s still being lived. Her heart is still beating and as far as I know her liver and kidneys are still working.”
Dolliver, who volunteers to speak to the public about organ donation at health fairs, says she understands it is a very touchy subject and people don’t want to think about death. She adds, however, “way too many people die waiting for an organ.”
According to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) Web site, there are currently more than 98,000 people on the national waiting list for organ transplants.
Those  interested in becoming an organ and tissue donor can choose that option when they apply for or renew their driver’s license at the motor vehicle department. The New England Organ Bank will also mail donor cards to people interested in donation.
Dolliver says she was moved to volunteer with the organ bank because her experience with the process had such a profound effect on her life.
She is comforted by the notion her daughter has also impacted a “huge number of lives as she died.”
“Nancy didn’t have a lot of friends because of where she was and the kind of life she led,” she says. “Outside of her family, there aren’t many people who remember her, but I know all the recipients remember her – they can’t help it.”
For more information about the New England Organ Bank, visit www.neob.org.