Friday, November 9, 2018

Tissue Donation

During this holiday season, one CURE contributor hopes that others will consider tissue or organ donation.


PUBLISHED November 09, 2018

Diana M. Martin has been an adjunct professor in The Writing and Reading Center at Montgomery College in Rockville, MD, for over 10 years. She has a MFA in Creative Nonfiction and has published articles in the areas of parenting, health and cultural arts. When her husband lost his battle with cancer of unknown primary, later identified as bile duct cancer, she became the sole caregiver for their adult son, Alex, who is autistic.
"I guess this month is a bad month for me," I say to people to cover up the fact that I still can't seem to get some bills paid on time, that I went over my credit card limit again, and that I generally have no interest in all things to do with finances, car repairs, heating units, and outside hoses. These are what Dan used to be good at. I resent the fact that I now have to be good at what he was good at.

He used to make an apple or pumpkin pie every Thanksgiving. No one would want a pie from me. It feels sacrilegious to buy one from a store. My sense of humor tells me that the least he could have done before he died was to make a few pies and put them in the freezer. Dan probably would have done that if I had suggested it to him. He was that kind of a guy. The most generous, accommodating, thankful man I knew. Kind of ironic that he died five days before Thanksgiving.

Before he died of bile duct cancer in 2015, we both made the decision to donate our brain to the Autism Tissue Project at Harvard. At that time I remember him saying jokingly to me, "that's the only way I'll ever get to go to Harvard." We were asked to do this because our son is on the autism spectrum and we believed this research would be valuable some day in finding a cure. About a week before he died, I called the number on the donation card. The organization I was directed to was the Autism BrainNet, a newly formed consortium for autism research which now included The Autism Tissue Project. I didn't think they would want Dan's brain, which had been ravaged by cancer, but they did. The administrator said to call her day or night.


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