Donor Recipients Given Life
BOBBY ARDOIN
Editor/Consulting Writer
Mark Nelson and Audrey Lanclos were living normally decades apart until they were each delivered grim health diagnoses that were eventually reversed after receiving second chances from two individuals that they had never met..
Nelson, a veteran soccer referee and physician assistant at Opelousas General Hospital, suddenly found himself four years ago at age 60, in the desperate clutches of advanced heart disease, while 37 years earlier, Lanclos was told by doctors that she was quickly losing her normal kidney functions.
The extended lives for Lanclos and Nelson that were provided by the gifts of organ donations were celebrated at OGHS on Tuesday afternoon in conjunction with the Louisiana Organ Procurement Agency.
A LOPA flag raising ceremony at the OGH Prudhomme Lane campus and information about becoming a member of the Louisiana organ donor registry were presented by LOPA representative Suzanne Morton.
Morton said displaying the LOPA flag during Donate Life Month is pertinent, since it provides symbolic hope to families waiting for donated organs.
His vibrancy of life, Nelson said, was restored after he received a heart transplant at Ochsner Hospital in New Orleans.
“That experience has obviously changed me and the way that I live every day. What I’ve gone through makes me want to share my experience. It also makes you realize that there are also individuals out there who have never received the same gift,” Nelson said following the ceremony.
Nelson said it has been his intention to share his story as a way of displaying appreciation for the transplanted heart that was taken from a 22-year-old man who lived in Florida.
Recently Nelson got a chance to do that, as he connected with family members of the man whose body once contained the heart that was beating inside Nelson on Tuesday afternoon.
“I now have my donor family and I want to honor them and their son every day. I have really become close to them. We share calls and texts several times a week and our relationship is growing stronger. They came down here recently and we visited a lot of places, sampling the Cajun experience and doing things together,” said Nelson.
The emotional climax for the Acadiana experience came, Nelson noted, when the mother of the donor pressed her hand upon Nelson’s heart as she prepared to leave Louisiana.
“It was the only time during the trip that I saw her cry, because I believe it was then that she realized she was leaving her boy,” Nelson added.
Lanclos is an organ donor and an advocate for procurement. She is now perhaps the oldest living Louisiana organ donation recipient, according to Morton.
Unlike Nelson, Lanclos said she has been unable to locate the family of her organ donor or family members.
“All I have been able to find out is that the person who had my kidney was from West Virginia,” added Lanclos, who received her kidney transplant during a procedure performed at Tulane Medical School.
Lanclos was a young mother in 1978 when she discovered that she was experiencing kidney failure. Lanclos afterward underwent several years of kidney dialysis until a nationwide search revealed that there was a suitable match.
Kidney specialists, said Lanclos, have been unable to accurately determine the cause of her kidney issues.
“The theory is that the problem with my kidneys originated possibly after I had a severe strep when I was 14. Things began happening soon after that and it wasn’t until I was 23 that I found out I needed a transplant, because something was seriously wrong with my kidneys.
“All we really knew is that I was going downhill really fast. I really didn’t know at the time how sick I was,” Lanclos said.
Lanclos said that over the last four decades that she has been volunteering with LOPA and considers herself fortunate now that she is taking care of grandchildren.
“Organ donation is a wonde
