Two mothers connected by one heart
In October, Donna Nugent put her ear to the chest of another mother’s son and heard her own boy’s heartbeat.
In that moment the tortured paths walked by two families converged on a Pictou County softball field.
“I’ve had a hole in my heart since Michael’s been gone,” said Nugent of her son, Michael Collier’s, 2018 death in a car accident. “When I put my ear to Jacob’s chest, it gave me such peace.”
This is as much a story about the love of two mothers as it is about the hearts of their sons.
We’ll take a moment to walk the paths of Donna Nugent and Sophia Basque.
Jacob Basque had always wanted to get braces.
Despite brushing regularly he kept getting cavities.
This posed a problem for a 15-year-old who was afraid of the dentist.
So before he could get braces, his mother Sophia brought Jacob to a doctor who would sedate him while working on his teeth.
It was an observant nurse watching the green on black display of Jacob’s heartbeat as she prepped him for an IV who first saw something was wrong.
The young athlete had bigger concerns than a winning smile.
An avalanche of trips from their home in Eskasoni to specialists appointments in Sydney and Halifax followed.
Within a week, Sophia’s happy and healthy son was suffering heart failure.
“The doctor seemed so calm when he said ‘your son has cardiomyopathy,’” remembered Sophia. “I asked him what that meant.”
The disease of the heart muscle was making it harder for Jacob’s heart to pump blood to the rest of the body. They began trying to treat the condition, which at this point was causing Jacob’s heart to work at 35 per cent capacity, with medication.
A cardiologist told Sophia that Jacob was a “very sick boy in a super human body.”
Sophia cried the entire drive home to Eskasoni.
Over the coming months, Sophia watched Jacob grow tired and lose weight.
On Christmas Day 2017, Jacob went into heart failure during a visit to the IWK.
He was stabilized and returned home to Eskasoni.
“Jacob looked at me and said, ‘I’m going to be all right,’” remembered Sophia.
She knew she had to believe him.
Jacob’s positivity was a conscious decision.
“I feel like the main reason why I stayed so positive is because I felt like if I was negative around my family and friends and was always complaining, I didn’t want them to remember me like that,” said Jacob on Wednesday. “I wanted to be remembered as happy.”
He couldn’t play hockey anymore and, despite the brave face he attempted for his family, Jacob was frustrated with being limited in what he could do.
By the following August his heart was working at less than 10 per cent capacity and Jacob was put on a transplant list.
“He just wanted to be a normal boy,” she said.
So he went back to school when he was released again from hospital on Sept. 7, 2018.
A woman of faith in both her son’s reassurances and God, Sophia turned to prayer.
“You’re praying for your son to be OK but that means you’re also praying for someone to give his heart,” said Sophia. “You don’t want to pray for this. You don’t want someone else to have to die so your son can live.”
Michael Collier had a girlfriend, a close circle of hunting and fishing buddies with whom he’d grown up and a good job at Michelin Tire.
Every morning before work during the week of Sept. 10, 2018, the 23-year-old called his mother in Truro to talk about his sisters and memories from his childhood.
“I was a single mother and Michael took on the role of the man of the house for his younger sisters,” said Donna Nugent. “He was always looking out for us.”
That Sunday, as he did every Sunday, Collier drove to Truro to spend time with his mother and sisters.
Heading back to Pictou County during the early morning hours of the following Monday, he fell asleep at the wheel.
No one was there to see his car drift into the median, hit the access turnaround at speed, flip repeatedly and land on its wheels in the opposing lane.
The trucker who came upon the accident was nearly killed himself as he desperately tried to wave down traffic with a flashlight.
“5:23 a.m. he was still alive when they got him out of the car,” said Nugent.
Her mind, like that of Sophia, is a rolodex of precise times, dates and definitions for everything to do with her boy.
Though the roof was crushed level with the hood of the car, Collier only appeared to have two cuts on his head from his sunglasses, a broken vertebrae and broken wrist.
“Fourteen airbags deployed,” said Nugent.
“The RCMP reconstructionist told me another 20 metres and he’d never have hit the snowplow turnaround.”
A few hours later a neurologist at the Queen Elizabeth 11 was telling her that due to the severe blunt-force trauma to the head, there was nothing that could have been done for Michael.
After sitting with her son, who looked fine other than the tube in his mouth, Nugent walked out of the emergency room, found a patch of dirt in the lawn outside, curled herself into a ball and cried.
It was her father, after whom her son had been named, who found her there and brought her back into the hospital.
By the end of the day, Michael was brain dead.
“My boy was so perfect,” said Nugent. “I didn’t want them to cut him up. But that’s what he wanted. He was always a giver.”
On Sept. 18, 2018, Jacob Basque was in class at Allison Bernard Memorial High School in Eskasoni trying to be a normal teenager.
His cellphone rang.
It was a three-way call with Sophia and the surgeon in Halifax — they had a possible match.
“To be honest all I could think was ‘I’m going to be so far behind in school,’” remembered Jacob.
At 5 a.m. the following morning, Jacob Basque was wheeled into a brightly lit room for the surgery.
Sophia sat worrying her rosary beads all day, remembering her son’s promise that he’d be alright.
“It felt like a dream,” she said.
It is a complicated relationship between the family of the donor and that of the recipient.
For that reason donor families aren’t supposed to know who has received their loved-one’s organs until they are contacted by the recipient family.
For better or worse in the age of social media, two and two get put together.
Filled with joy for her son and his future, Sophia made a Facebook post.
It got shared and seen and Nugent got a call from a friend.
Messages were exchanged between the families.
“I understand now why they try not to let the recipient know who was the donor,” said Sophia. “I felt so bad for Donna. She lost her son and I still have mine.”
The families gave it some time. Sophia wanted Donna to have space to grieve.
And there were practical considerations.
Jacob had a compromised immune system as a result of the procedure and the many drugs he’s on.
There were a lot of trips back to hospital as he slowly got stronger.
Meanwhile, Nugent was working to keep Michael’s memory alive.
She formed Team Momo, a nickname his little sister had created before she could pronounce Michael.
Through walk-a-thons, bowla-thons and softball tournaments they raised money in Michael’s memory for organizations in Pictou County.
On her kitchen table she keeps a teddy bear that plays a recording of her son’s heartbeat whenever she touches its paw.
By Sunday, Oct. 27, both families were ready.
Jacob and Sophia came to the field in Trenton for the Michael Collier Memorial Softball tournament.
Michael was a joker and the tournament was designed to not just raise money for local civil service organizations but to celebrate that memory.
There were pumpkins in the outfield which if hit required the batter to perform a dare proposed by the opposing team. All players were required to wear costumes and run the bases in reverse order.
In the midst of the fun under a leaden fall sky, Donna met Jacob for the first time and put her head to his chest.
Sophia watched.
They are mothers connected by one heart.
“It was bitter sweet,” said Nugent.
Recipients of heart transplants are never entirely out of the woods.
The Basque family have been told that the average life expectancy is 10 years for a heart recipient.
However, there are cases where a successful recipient has survived 50 years with a new heart.
“I feel stronger every time I do stuff,” said Jacob.
He’s back to living as close as possible a normal life.
He plays hockey, does well in school and recently got his driver’s licence.
As before, Sophia anchors her faith in Jacob’s assurances.
“I know this heart will be with him for the rest of life,” she said. “And he will be an old man with this heart.”
Nugent recently received a letter from the recipient of Michael’s liver in Antigonish.
She knows his pancreas went to someone in Western Canada.
“I have been in a deep dark hole this past year because he was my boy, my only boy,” said Nugent. “But out of my tragedy there has been this blessing.”
There’s another blessing coming to the Nugent family.
Nugent’s 22-year-old daughter is due to have a boy this winter.
He will be named Michael.