Where love, devotion come in many forms
With the tumult following the surprising death of Mayor Ed Lee two months ago and the ensuing game of mayoral musical chairs, one heartwarming detail got lost.
Lee had one of those tiny pink stickers on his driver’s license signifying he was an organ donor. After he died of a heart attack at San Francisco General Hospital in the early morning hours of Dec. 12, doctors were able to recover his corneas and bone tissue for donation.
Unlike, say, a heart or a liver, those tissues can be preserved and don’t need to be transplanted immediately. Donor Network West, which coordinates organ and tissue donations for 40 counties in Northern California and Nevada, isn’t saying whether Lee’s eyes and bone have been transplanted yet — or who may have received them.
Noel Sanchez, spokesman for Donor Network West, said the mayor was an organ and tissue donor, but doctors determined just his corneas and bone tissue were suitable for transplant.
Like me, Supervisor Katy Tang is curious about who may be carrying a little piece of the mayor inside them. Since last year, she has honored organ and tissue donors once a month at Board of Supervisors meetings, reading names given to her by Donor Network West. She and her staff were surprised when January’s list included Lee’s name.
“It was incredibly touching and just speaks volumes about how generous he was,” Tang said.
Tang became a champion of organ donation — she’s a registered donor herself — after seeing firsthand how the matter touched her longtime legislative aide, Ashley Summers.
Summer’s husband, Charlie Paulson, suf-
fers from polycystic kidney disease, an inherited disorder in which cysts form on kidneys, causing the organs to swell and not function properly. Summers, 32, and Paulson, 35, married in 2011 and have a daughter, Alice, who’s 2½. They live in the Sunset District, and Paulson teaches math at Lincoln High School.
In 2013, Paulson’s disease worsened to the point where his abdomen had grown tremendously because of the cysts, he was in constant pain and he had no energy. Then things got worse. He had blood in his urine, his vision worsened, and he had a hard time eating.
In 2016, he started dialysis, a grueling regimen that sucks up time and energy.
“It’s a devastating way to live,” Summers said. “The way to fix his problem was a kidney transplant.”
The wait for a kidney from a deceased donor is seven to 10 years in San Francisco, Summers said — and Paulson didn’t have time to wait. The family sought a kidney from a living donor with pleas on social media.
An anonymous donor came forward, and Paulson received his new kidney in October. Both of Paulson’s kidneys were so cyst-ridden, they each weighed nine pounds and had to be removed. A normal adult kidney weighs a quarter pound. Finally, his energy, appetite and health returned.
“The fact that my husband was hungry on Thanksgiving made me want to cry,” Summers said. “The fact that he has energy to play with Alice at the park — those little things make such a difference.”
Summers and Tang hope the fact that San Francisco’s first Chinese American mayor was a donor will inspire other Chinese Americans to donate, too. Donor registration among Chinese Americans — as with several other minority groups — is lower than it is in the white population, making it harder to find matches for Chinese Americans in need of organs and tissue.
“He literally has made someone see again,” Summers said of the late mayor. “You can’t make this stuff up.” Story of heart: This time of year brings overpriced roses, sappy cards and the annual sale of those big, colorful hearts to benefit the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation.
One of the hearts has a rather dramatic backstory. It was created by Angelina Duckett, a 26-year-old mosaic artist who grew up in Santa Rosa’s Bennett Valley neighborhood. She chose to decorate her heart with an image of the quails that would walk through the poppies in her family’s front yard every afternoon.
Duckett had been working on the time-intensive process of covering her heart in tiny, hand-cut glass tiles for months when she took it with her on a trip to see her parents, who still live in her childhood home.
She got there the night of Sunday, Oct. 8, and hours later, devastating wildfires erupted. Duckett and her parents could see flames to the north and south. Her brother’s family, including his wife and two little kids, left their home, which was in even more danger, to regroup with Duckett and her parents.
Within hours, there was a mandatory evacuation, and the family piled into cars with their treasures. The children, two dogs and a fish. Family photo albums. A great-grandparent’s war medals. And Duckett’s heart.
“The most important things were each other and, for me, that heart,” Duckett said. “I said there was no way I was going to let that thing go.”
Duckett’s childhood home survived, but her brother’s home didn’t. Duckett moved out of her apartment in the city’s North of the Panhandle neighborhood to move home, where her brother and his family are living, too. She’s helping take care of his kids and is working on a big mosaic project nearby.
Wells Fargo, which has the biggest collection of hearts benefiting the hospital, has already purchased Duckett’s heart. It will be prominently featured at the bank’s annual Hearts in San Francisco event from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Wednesday at 333 Market St. Artists and their hearts will appear in the plaza.
They’ll also be at the annual Hearts & Heroes luncheon at AT&T Park on Thursday. Tickets are still available at sfghf.org.
Duckett said she hopes that whoever sees her heart and hears its story thinks about “how much love people have for one another and for their families and their communities.”
We could all use that reminder these days.