Media Contact: Sandra Van ([email protected])
Ph. 1-800-396-1002
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LOS ANGELES (July 14, 2000) -- When a car crash on the roads of northern Indiana took the life of 18-year-old Jonathon "Johnny" Bender in mid-June, his mother and other family members decided to offer his organs for transplantation to save other lives. One of those was the life of John Bender, 62, a resident of southern California, who was distantly related to the donor on both his mother's and father's sides of the family.
The elder Bender -- who also was known through the years as "Johnny" to many of the Indiana relatives -- learned a year and a half ago that he had contracted hepatitis C, a serious liver infection. By the end of 1999, the organ had deteriorated to the point that his doctors told him he would need a liver transplant to survive. After undergoing a series of tests, Bender's name was placed on the liver recipient waiting list at Cedars-Sinai in early June. But because the number of recipients vastly outnumbers the supply of available organs, there was no guarantee that a liver would become available in time.
John's wife, Elizabeth, says immediate family members were planning to be tested to determine if they might be partial liver donors. Because liver cells regenerate, a healthy liver can be surgically split and shared with someone in need. The pieces of liver grow back to normal size in both the donor and the recipient.
"We were pursuing this with hopes that it could still happen this fall," says Elizabeth, who prefers to go by Liz. Debra, the oldest of the couple's three adult daughters, was actually scheduled to start undergoing tests in mid to late June, but the startling news they received from distant family members put those plans on hold.
"On the morning of the 19th, we found out that a relative in Indiana had been involved in a car accident and the family had made the decision to make his organs available," Liz recalls. "Other members of the family knew about our situation and they started talking about this. They decided they would like to designate specifically that the liver would come to California with John in mind."
Joe Stutzman, brother of the accident victim's mother, Esther Stutzman Bender, helped his sister make the most difficult decision of her life. She was enduring the highs and lows of emotion as her son's condition fluctuated during the week that he survived after the June 12 accident.
According to Joe, the degree of brain injury at first appeared catastrophic, and the doctor raised the issue of donating Johnny's organs, but Esther could not bear to consider it. Then by the third day the pressure within the brain seemed to be decreasing and there was hope that Johnny might survive. But on the evening of the sixth day, the doctor said Johnny was already gone and would be pronounced dead the following morning after a confirming test could be conducted.
That Sunday night, June 18, Joe pursued the idea of organ donation. "We realized that Johnny in California needed a liver, and so I talked to Esther again to really consider donating the organs," says Joe. "Of course, having her hopes high that he would survive and then to get this news that he won't survive, was kind of devastating."
Joe says he encouraged his sister to donate Johnny's organs because a woman who attends his church had experienced a similar situation when her son died. "His mother went ahead and donated his organs, and a few months after that there was a man who walked into her yard and said he had received the boy's heart. That mother was just overwhelmed that some of her son's organs were still alive."
Family members supported Esther's decision to donate Johnny's organs, encouraging her to extend other lives. "I told her, 'The time will come that you'll be very, very glad that you made this decision,'" says Joe, "but when it came down to the time to put her name on that piece of paper to release Johnny's organs, she told me she almost couldn't sign that. It was very difficult."
Although most of the organs were to remain within the geographic region where Johnny died, when transplant coordinators learned that a relative in California needed a liver, they contacted their counterparts and John Bender's physicians at Cedars-Sinai to determine if the potential recipient and the donor tissue were a suitable match.
By the following morning, June 20, the liver had been flown to Cedars-Sinai to begin the seven-hour transplant operation, which was performed by a surgical team headed by Christopher R. Shackleton, M.D., Director of the Center for Liver and Kidney Diseases and Transplantation.
"This life-saving transplant was made possible through the generosity and selflessness of the mother and family members in Indiana who made a courageous decision at a most devastating time in their lives," according to Dr. Shackleton. He notes that the number of candidates for liver transplantation in the United States grows exponentially at 30 percent per year. Like other organ transplant experts, he urges family members to discuss their wishes before a crisis occurs, making the decision easier to finalize.
In addition to losing Johnny on June 19, on Friday, June 23, Esther and Joe lost a sister to complications of diabetes. She had been a patient at a hospital in South Bend, while Johnny had been cared for at one in Fort Wayne, where he had been airlifted after the accident.
Although friends and family usually called him Johnny, he was always Jonathon to his mother. He was the second of three sons born to Esther Stutzman Bender and David Bender, who later had two daughters. David died in a bicycling accident several years ago.
"This is a very difficult time for Esther, being that she lost her husband 4 Ω years ago and now her middle son," says Joe, a dairy farmer and one of Esther's older brothers. He adds that he and his brothers and sisters -- a family of 10 children -- have always been close and available to lend emotional support when needed. In fact, all have remained within about four miles of each other in a mostly farming community in north central Indiana.
Although John and Liz Bender lived in Ohio before moving to southern California, they had remained in contact through the years with several of the Indiana relatives who were similar in age. John, who now has 10 grandchildren, was released from Cedars-Sinai on July 5. He says he's "feeling wonderful, just wonderful" physically, although there are mixed emotions resulting from receiving a life-saving organ through a family tragedy. As Liz states it, "Every time we think about what the family has to go through, our hearts go out to them."
"We can kind of celebrate here, knowing that there are people who received extended life through the situation," says Joe in Indiana. "It's sad to know that it took the loss of a loved one, but if Esther hadn't decided to donate his organs, they would have perished in the ground with Johnny, with his body, so somebody received life out of this."
Several members of the Stutzman family married members of the Bender family, making it complicated to sort out the relationship of donor and recipient. Esther's grandfather, who also was named Joe Stutzman, was the brother of the mother of the liver recipient. David Bender, Jonathon's father, was the son of Orus Bender, brother of the recipient's father, who also was named John.
Therefore, the liver donor was the great-grandson of the recipient's mother's brother, and the grandson of the recipient's father's brother.
Also, the Joe Stutzman who is Esther's brother is married to Ruth Bender Stutzman, sister of David Bender, the late father of the donor.
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For media information and to arrange an interview, please call 1-800-396-1002. Thanks for not publishing these numbers in stories. This news release, plus other news information from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, is available on Newswise at http://www.newswise.com.
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