Nic Whitacre, a nursing student at Delgado Community College, was diagnosed with renal failure in 2006 and had been on organ donor lists for six years.
After Whitacre, 46, was admitted into a hospital for treatment, they immediately put him on dialysis. Unfortunately, they had trouble finding a permanent access point for the dialysis.
Five permanent access attempts, 15 catheters and two years later, his kidneys were still failing, and he had been on dialysis for so long that his blood became useless in his own body. The doctors told him they had done everything they could, but he was sent home to die.
Doctors told him he would live only for a day, possibly two. But while he was at home writing his will and getting his insurance policy together, Whitacre received a phone call.
“Mr. Whitacre, we have a match,” the nurse told him.
Whitacre was matched with the kidneys and pancreas of Chris Gregory, a freshman at Loyola who suffered a brain aneurism. He was put on life support but died a few days later on March 27, 2008. His death shook the Loyola community, and many students have still been trying to cope with the loss.
“It’s been so hard on everybody, and everyone is dealing with it separately,” said Matt Nolan, jazz studies junior. “I don’t think many people have been able to move past it.”
Whitacre received the transplants on March 28, 2008, and founded the H-E-R-O Movement, which stands for “Help Everyone Receive Organs,” on Dec. 22, 2008.
“I began to do activity as soon as I received my transplant. I wanted to do something different for my second life, and this is how I can pay it forward,” Whitacre said.
He was having problems thinking of a name for the movement, when he had a dream. In this dream Gregory told him to name it H-E-R-O, and Whitacre woke up the next morning and began making the H-E-RO Movement Web site.
Whitacre’s goal is to register enough donors so that waiting lists for organs no longer exist within five to 10 years, and 20 people a day won’t have to die because they couldn’t receive a transplant.
“Currently, there are 104,000 people on the national waiting list for organ transplants. The technology is already there, and I’m walking proof that it doesn’t need to be perfected,” Whitacre said. “If you register to become a donor, in my eyes, you’re already a hero.
There’s a lot of things in this world that we can’t change, but this we can.”
His current goal is to start in Louisiana and get 50,000 people involved and registered this year. He already has the sponsorship of the Louisiana School Boards Association, and every public school will be encouraged to be part of the movement. Forty-one schools, including one in Washington D.C., have agreed to participate.
Whitacre plans to make the H-E-R-O Movement go national through a contest he is sponsoring. Participants can submit an original video work that promotes organ donation to www.h-e-r-o-movement.org. The contest ends on March 27, 2010, the same day that Gov.
Bobby Jindal, R-La., is sponsoring a statewide day of organ donation in honor of Gregory. Every video will be put on Youtube.com, and Whitacre hopes there will be so many hits on the videos that it will launch into a national movement and will receive national media attention.
Loyola to facilitate organ donations
Loyola will become the first private school to become a part of the H-E-R-O Movement later this month. Nolan, who met Whitacre and said they had an instant connection, is spearheading the campaign, along with the other members of the Beggars fraternity.
Nolan said the main purpose of Loyola’s H-E-R-O group is to facilitate the contest and all of the activities that will be going on around campus.
“We are proud to be the first private university on board, and if it goes national, we’ll be back to do it again next year,” Nolan said. “Out of all the schools involved, this is the most sentimental for Nic and I because Chris went here. It’s our duty as a university to do everything we can to promote organ donation, and every person counts.”
Nolan said this is a special project for him that goes beyond the H-E-R-O Movement.
“Meeting Nic couldn’t be a more clear way that Chris is saying, ‘This is what I started, this is what you need to finish.’ We’re not doing this for Chris, or in honor of Chris, we’re doing it with Chris, because he is who’s keeping Nic alive,” Nolan said.
“Nic is completely selfless. He always says, ‘We’re going to do this, or that,’ and at first I thought he was talking about his wife. He later told me he thinks about his life as if it’s him and Chris living it. He said ‘We do everything together,'” Nolan said.
“When I think about it, and my math may not be right, but by the time we’re all 30, Chris’s death could have potentially saved the lives of over 100,000 people. That’s a pretty incredible number, and he was an incredible guy,” Nolan said.
As for Whitacre, he wants everyone to realize that this is a movement dedicated to Gregory.
“It’s tough to know that someone gave up their life in order for me to live love, but it’s my duty to pay it forward,” he said.
Allison Baznik can be reached at [email protected]
