By Emma Rausch
emma@thepaperofwabash.com
WABASH, Ind. – Wabash native Tracy Driscoll is a lifesaving hero.
On Jan. 7, 2013, Driscoll, a mother of three, died of a brain aneurysm and heart attack.
“It was really sudden and unexpected,” daughter Haleigh Mann said. “She went to the Wabash hospital and immediately flown to Lutheran in Fort Wayne.”
However, before her death, Driscoll chose to be an organ donor and with her passing, she saved three lives, including that of Kirby Cochran, of Franklin.
Almost four years after her death, on Jan. 2, 2017, the Indiana Donor Network and Donate Life will honor Driscoll and Cochran at the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, Calif., with the Donate Life float.
The float’s 2017 theme is “Teammates in Life,” both of which Indiana’s honorees personify with their connection.
While Cochran will ride the float, Driscoll will be memorialized in a floragraph, a portrait crafted from organic material, on one of the float’s sails.
“This (connection) is a blessing,” Cochran said. “Haleigh and I are super close. I have a good relationship with her. We talk and communicate a lot probably an abnormal (amount) for most recipient and donor families. It just doesn’t happen, but for me, I knew that’s what I wanted and that’s why I wrote the letter (to connect with Driscoll’s family).”
In 2000, Cochran, a detective for the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department, was diagnosed with lupus.
“I wasn’t sick really until 2012 when I was told I needed a liver transplant at a follow up doctor visit,” Cochran said.
In November 2012, he was placed on the national transplant waiting list and could only wait and hope for a call.
“Basically when you’re placed on the transplant list, you’re not given a timeframe. You’re given a number,” he said. “I was fairly high on the list because I was pretty sick at that time.”
He waited for 52 days when the call came Jan. 8, 2013.
“The day that it had happened I was actually working that day and I wasn’t feeling that well,” he said. “I was at the doctor’s office for a follow up visit when the phone call came and I missed the call. My wife got the call. My mom got the call. So they all started calling my phone and I was literally checking out of the doctor’s office.”
Cochran met the news with mixed emotions.
“I was by myself, which was not good,” he said. “I did not have the support and it was really overwhelming. It’s overwhelming now as I think about it.
“What goes through your mind when you’re waiting on a transplant is are you going to survive the entire time? Fifty-two days is pretty quick. So for me it was a blessing. I moved up quick, but having said that I was also very sick, not sure if I was going to survive.
“Secondarily, there’s (the other) side of it,” he continued. “This lady (Driscoll) had to pass for me to survive and she left a lot behind. So it’s a rollercoaster of emotions, honestly.”
A day prior, in the northern part of the state, Mann and her family had only just begun to grieve when they were asked to make a decision, according to Mann.
“Honestly you can’t really prepare for anything like that,” Mann said. “It was very sudden. When we got the news, I couldn’t fathom it. It just wasn’t real.
“But then we met some people from the Indiana Donor Network and they were so nice and they made sure they weren’t pushing too hard, saying, ‘Hey you should donate her organs.’ They were really great, listened to us and we had a lot of questions about the process and organ donation in general and they answered all of our questions.”
Driscoll also donated her two kidneys to two other individuals.
The representatives remained in contact with Mann ever since the donation.
“I still am in contact with one of the ladies that was actually there that night,” Mann said. “I’ll text her or call her if I need anything, any support. … Because of organ donation, I have an extended family and I’ve met so many great people because of what we decided to do.”
About three months after, Mann received a letter from Cochran’s family.
“After the donation process, they’re really great about making sure that the donor family and the recipient family, they both can consent and saying, ‘Hey we want to meet or want to have contact,’” Mann said.
“So first we got a basic letter saying how old he was and where he lived and then we got a letter from him a couple months later.”
Organ donation was important to Driscoll, which her daughter learned while applying for a driver’s license at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.
“They ask you, ‘Do you want to be a donor?’ and being 15- or 16-years-old, you’re like I don’t know,” Mann said. “So I look at Mom and she was like, ‘Yes. Absolutely. I’m an organ donor. You should be an organ donor.’
“So on the way home, we had a conversation of why she was a donor and why it’s important to be an organ donor. So then, for me, when they approached us, that was a no-brainer because I knew that is what she wanted.”
Although her mother is gone, Mann said her mother still lives on in those that she helped save.
“She’s still living on in Kirby and those other two gentlemen,” she said. “There’s really no words that can describe how amazing that feels.”
In honoring donors and recipients at the Tournament of Roses Parade, the message Donate Life and the Indiana Donor Network are sending is clear, Cochran said.
“Everyone needs to talk about organ donation,” he explained. “Secondarily, it’s so easy to become an organ donor that it’s almost a brainless thing to do. It’s 22 people a day die because there are not enough organ donations going on. It’s kind of an unacceptable number when there are probably 22 of us in this room.
“So I would just encourage everyone to help stop that wait. That 52-day wait. That one-year wait. That five-year wait, because for me I’m probably one of the shortest waits that I know of around. So I would just encourage folks to get out and register to donate. If you have questions about it or apprehensive about it, talk to your family about it because (Driscoll and Mann’s decision) is a prime example.
“She saved my life, he continued. “There’s no other way to say it. She gave me the gift of life and this is my way to pay it back.”
Even from the giving side, organ donation is a blessing, Mann added.
“For Kirby it was saving his life as well as the other two gentlemen,” she said, “but as a donor family, losing my mom was the hardest thing that I ever experienced and the comfort that the donation has brought to our family and the level of support that we had now that we also had four years ago, I don’t know where I’d be today if I didn’t have this.
“It gave me hope. It gave me a chance to see the positive at such a tragic time. Organ donation was not only a blessing to Kirby and his family. It was also a blessing to ours.
“Please have those conversations with your family,” Mann continued, “because you never know when something tragic is going to happen and be prepared in knowing you’ll be making the right decision in honoring their decision to be a donor.”