Donation Erases Religious, Racial Divide(positive story)

You bring together one African-American Christian man in need of a kidney, and one Caucasian Muslim woman from Sherman Oaks willing to give him one of hers.

Add two surgeons from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles -- one Jewish, the other German -- and you have a morality play for these difficult times.

It begins last February at a four-day self-development seminar at which Mike Jones of Los Angeles is telling the instructor that he might not be able to attend all the sessions because he has a few kidney dialysis appointments he can't miss.

During a break later, Patricia Abdullah of Sherman Oaks and others attending the seminar talked with Jones about his disease.

"I told them I had been on dialysis for five years and needed a kidney transplant, but a suitable donor had not been found, including members of my own family who had been tested," Jones said Wednesday from his Los Angeles home.

What happened next stunned the 41-year-old systems analyst, but it was only a prelude of bigger shocks to come.

Abdullah, 53, whose name was Patricia Wright before converting to the Muslim faith 15 years ago, suggested to the class after the break that they make finding a kidney donor for Jones a class project. Everyone readily agreed.

When the four-day seminar ended, most of the class, including Jones and Abdullah, moved on to an advanced 16-week course, which ended in August. A donor had still not been found.

That's when Abdullah stepped forward with an offer that shocked the class. It came during an exercise in which the students were learning how to successfully make unreasonable requests of another person.

"I said, 'Mike, I'm O-positive,"' Abdullah said. "He just looked at me and didn't get it, so I repeated myself -- 'Mike, I'm O-positive.'

"He still didn't get what I was trying to say, so I said, 'Go ahead, Mike, make an unreasonable request of me."'

Jones said he still couldn't believe it, but he asked anyway. "Will you give me one of your kidneys?" he said.

If you believe in karma, believe in this. After it was determined Abdullah was a perfect tissue match for Jones, the transplant surgery was set for the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11.

"There was a scheduling conflict with the two transplant teams so it had to be rescheduled for Sept. 25," Abdullah said Wednesday night, stopping by Jones' house to see how he was doing on her way home to Sherman Oaks from a new job she has started this week in Playa del Rey.

"After all that happened on the 11th, it was like maybe this surgery was supposed to be postponed so we could somehow become a sign of hope and healing for the future," said the mother of two children and grandmother of three.

Her married daughter, Elizabeth Chacon, says the whole family is proud of her mother and not at all surprised by what she did.

"That's just my mom," Elizabeth said. "It's always been in her nature to be compassionate with all people."

The surgery was a success. With medication, Jones should live a long, normal life, doctors say.

Dr. Gerhard Fuchs, a German surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center removed Abdullah's kidney laparoscopically through a tiny port rather than through the usual large, open procedure, so she was out of the hospital and back to work in about a week.

Another Cedars-Sinai transplant surgeon, Dr. Louis Cohen, who is Jewish, transplanted the organ into Jones, who came home from the hospital last week.

"I always stop by to congratulate donors afterwards, so I walked into the recovery room that morning, and saw this lady, and read the last name on her chart," Cohen said.

"I just about fell over. That's when I knew this was something special, a very dramatic moment, considering what we're dealing with in the world right now.

They talk a couple of times a week on the phone now, and plan to do a joint Christmas card with a picture of both their families together -- the Muslim woman from the Valley and the Christian man from L.A. carrying one of her kidneys.

They both understand the importance of the moral of this story in the world right now.

"I tell her, do you realize what you've done?" Jones says. "Not only have you given me life, but you've made a big impact on society.

"I'm a Baptist and she's a Muslim, but prayers are prayers," he said. "Even though we practice different religions, we're all God's children."

Abdullah agrees. If anything good comes out of this story she hopes it is this, she says.

"If anyone in the future uses race, ethnicity or religion as the reason for a terrorist act of any kind, it's bogus," Abdullah said. "As bogus as the world being flat.

I just got this in an email:

Subject: Editorial from a Romanian newspaper

An Ode to America

Why are Americans so united? They don't resemble one another even if you paint them! They speak all the languages of the world and form an astonishing mixture of civilizations.

Some of them are nearly extinct, others are incompatible with one another, and in matters of religious beliefs, not even God can count how many they are.

Still, the American tragedy turned three hundred million people into a hand put on the heart. Nobody rushed to accuse the White House, the army, the secret services that they are only a bunch of losers. Nobody rushed to empty their bank accounts. Nobody rushed on the streets nearby to gape about. The Americans volunteered to donate blood and to give a helping hand. After the first moments of panic, they raised the flag on the smoking ruins, putting on T-shirts, caps and ties in the colors of the national flag. They placed flags on buildings and cars as if in every place and on every car a minister or the president was passing. On every occasion they started singing their traditional song: "God Bless America!".

Silent as a rock, I watched the charity concert broadcast on Saturday once, twice, three times, on different TV channels. There were Clint Eastwood, Willie Nelson, Robert de Niro, Julia Roberts, Cassius Clay, Jack Nicholson, Bruce Springsteen, Silvester Stalone, James Wood, and many others whom no film or producers could ever bring together. The American's solidarity spirit turned them into a choir. Actually, choir is not the word. What you could hear was the heavy artillery of the American soul.

What neither George W. Bush, nor Bill Clinton, nor Colin Powell could say without facing the risk of stumbling over words and sounds, was being heard in a great and unmistakable way in this charity concert.

I don't know how it happened that all this obsessive singing of America didn't sound croaky, nationalist, or ostentatious! It made you green with envy because you weren't able to sing for your country without running the risk of being considered chauvinist, ridiculous, or suspected of who-knows-what mean interests.

I watched the live broadcast and the rerun of its rerun for hours listening to the story of the guy who went down one hundred floors with a woman in a wheelchair without knowing who she was, or of the Californian hockey player, who fought with the terrorists and prevented the plane from hitting a target that would have killed other hundreds or thousands of people. How on earth were they able to bow before a fellow human?

Imperceptibly, with every word and musical note, the memory of some turned into a modern myth of tragic heroes. And with every phone call, millions and millions of dollars were put in a collection aimed at rewarding not a man or a family, but a spirit which nothing can buy.

What on earth can unite the Americans in such a way? Their land? Their galloping history? Their economic power? Money? I tried for hours to find an answer, humming songs and murmuring phrases which risk of sounding like commonplaces. I thought things over, but I reached only one conclusion.

Only freedom can work such miracles!

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.