EIGHT-ANGLE POSEI try to get to the yoga studio twice a day, before
and after work, but all of that can get blown out
of the window, because there’s no typical day in
transplant surgery. Transplants can come in at any
time. You have to be ready at a moment’s notice.
Tomorrow morning, I’m going to Maryland
to procure a liver for one of my patients in the
Bronx. I’ll wake up around five and get to my
hospital about six. An ambulance there will take
me and a few other doctors and residents to
Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. These surger-
ies have time constraints that don’t always work
with commercial airline schedules, so we’ll use a
private plane. When we land, another ambulance
will be there to take us to the hospital in Mary-
land where there will be a donor waiting.
An organ donor is a person who has just
died—who has no more blood flow to the brain,
but whose body is being kept alive on a breath-
ing machine. We keep their identities anony-
mous, but this one is a young person who died
from asthma, basically. The patient’s family
has graciously allowed their loved one to be a
donor, which is an unbelievable act of kindness
for society and the world.
There might be a few different medical teams
in Maryland tomorrow. I specialize in liver, kid-
ney, and pancreas transplants, but there might
also be a heart team there, and a lung team, and
others. Sometimes when we land at an airport
we’ll see three or four other planes there from all
over the country. You all sort of bond over this
shared experience.
In the operating room, it’s always solemn
before we begin to remove the organs. We honor
the donor with a moment of silence. Sometimes a
nurse will read a written statement from the fam-
ily; the family will write about how lucky they are
to have lived with their loved one, and how they
are passing on this gift to other people. It’s heart
wrenching and connects everyone in the room.
At that moment you’re not a surgeon; you’re aJay
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