By Evan Falchuk
My mother sent me this incredible medical story from the New York Times. It’s about a young woman, Jessa Perrin, who suddenly faced a life-threatening diagnosis, and the heroic work her doctors and nurses did to save her.
The story spans the globe- from the remarkable medical team at the Hadassah hospital in Israel to the transplant team at New York Presbyterian Hospital. But perhaps the most moving people in the story are unnamed – the family of a little girl who, on her death, donated her liver to save Jessa.
Most people with transplants have time to prepare, but she had woken up one day in an intensive care unit, thinking she was still in Israel, only to be told that she was in New York — with a new liver. Jessa said only, “It’s crazy.”
In this time of heated debate around health care reform, it is easy to lose sight of the heroic work doctors do every day to save people’s lives. It doesn’t matter what kind of health care system they work under, they focus every day on making things possible that seem like miracles.
