Articles from prior issues of The Advocate

January/February 2001

President's Message

I had been told that one of the most difficult parts of my job as NADE President would be to come up with new topics for the “President’s Message”. Unfortunately, circumstances made it easy for me to determine what I was going to say in this column. In November a very dear friend of mine died in Duke Medical Center while awaiting a heart/lung transplant. Many of you had the opportunity to meet Ed Buck when he was a speaker at the Southeast Regional Conference held in Jackson in May 1999. At that point his condition had deteriorated to the point that he had to leave his job as a CDR examiner in the unit I supervised. I want to tell you some of Ed’s story.

Ed was born with the congenital heart disease known as transposition of the great vessels. He was always amused when a new technician reviewed his chest x-ray and noticed that nothing was where it was supposed to be. Fortunately, Ed’s father was a doctor and he raised Ed to be all that he could be and to do anything he felt able to do. Ed never saw himself as disabled even when he was so sick that transplantation was his only hope. When he left the DDS, he was in severe congestive heart failure. He was first evaluated at UAB for a heart/lung transplant but they soon removed his name from the transplant list because of his low blood counts. He was told that his situation was not likely to change and he knew that without a transplant his prognosis was bleak. During a later hospitalization, a consulting physician referred Ed’s history and current chart to Duke because he thought they might be able to help. They did another complete evaluation and the doctors there decided he was a viable candidate so once again his name went on a transplant list. Since he could never be farther than two hours away from the center should donor organs become available, Ed had to move his wife and sons from Mississippi to North Carolina earlier this year. He always had a funny story, a song and even a delightful howl for his family and friends. He even sang for his caregivers at the various hospitals he visited but, in the end, his heart gave out and he never had his transplant.

I can’t begin to tell you how much we all miss the courageous spirit and loving goodness of Ed Buck. NADE has long been involved in support of organ donation/transplant, a commitment which came after Maureen Halsey-Wright lost her young daughter who was awaiting a heart transplant. At our conference Ed was joined on the program by another former DDS examiner, Roger Skelton, who had successfully undergone a heart transplant and is now a claims representative for SSA. Roger is happy and healthy and able to do things he had never been able to do before in his life. We know that transplantation saves lives. Our task is to get that message out to all who will listen. Keep in mind that 8-10 people die daily awaiting a transplant and there are over 76,000 people currently waiting for transplants in the United States alone. Please help me to further this worthwhile cause by becoming an organ donor yourself. Talk with your family; sign a card; do what you can to save lives by sharing your organs!