Karin Stanton | Hawaii 24/7 Contributing Editor
Stephanie McCurdy can’t wait to met Devin.
He’s the kind of son every mother would be proud of – good student, good athlete, a young man with his whole life ahead of him.
Devin and his mother, Vicky, are arriving Wednesday, March 3 on the Big Island for a remarkable reunion with McCurdy.
Seventeen years ago, the two mothers were staging vigils in separate California hospital rooms. The life force was draining from Mikhail, age 3, and Devin, just 11 months old.
When Mikhail’s fight ended, his healthy liver was transplanted into Devin, who was only hours away from death, and his kidneys went to teenager.
“At the official moment of Mikhail’s death, I was approached very gently about possible organ donation from my son,” McCurdy said. “I made a decision right then and there that I have never regretted. While the devastation of the loss of a child was great, I gained two reasons to go on living that third day of December 1992.”
As a medical doctor herself, McCurdy said she understood the importance right away.
“I think if Mikhail had made it to the surgery and died then, they wouldn’t have approached me,” she said. “But it did not take me long to say the words out loud. ‘Yes! We would be willing to give what ever was needed.’ This is what my son would have wanted.”
McCurdy said she has not ever regretted her decision.
“Devin’s mother wrote to me that the liver was a ‘perfect match’ as her son’s jaundice began to leave his face shortly after he was wheeled to the recovery room,” McCurdy said. “Mikhail’s kidneys were donated to a 19-year-old who had been undergoing dialysis for some time. Those organs began working as soon as they were connected on the operating table.
“As the years passed, thoughts of the recipients were never far from my mind as I wondered about their health and if they were leading productive lives,” McCurdy said.
She regularly contacted One Legacy, the nonprofit organ donor network that supports and tracks families, and was reassured to learn that they were indeed still doing well.
This year, McCurdy got word back that Devin’s family had been wanted to meet her for 17 years.
“Once I got in touch with Vicky, it was a love connection of sisterhood. That doesn’t happen every day,” McCurdy said. “The bond that we share as mothers of our very special children was the foundation. We share our sons, as her’s carries the liver of mine and we share the years of wondering about each other and caring and praying for each other as each of us worked through our share of grief and hard times … me with recovering from the death of a beloved child, her dealing day-to-day every day and every moment of her son’s life as she balanced her role as mother and caretaker of his health with the many medications that he had to have on a daily basis, and tending her other children and balancing their lives to be as normal as possible.”
The two women were soon making plans for this week’s reunion at McCurdy’s Keaau home.
“We could not spend another moment in life knowing each other and not seeing other in person. What an honor it is going to be to meet this special woman who call me her hero,” she said.
McCurdy doesn’t believe she deserve that accolade.
“I explain to her gently that I am not a hero. My son was the hero. But I like to think that that this was all planned a long time ago in heaven,” she said. “God knew the outcome and made plans to make it better and give two families a bridge of love to cross and connect them, through the loving gift of one special little boy, Mikhail Josiah McCurdy.”
McCurdy said she expects the reunion to be as emotional as the telephone conversations she has had with Devin’s mom.
“We both cry. But if it hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t have Devin,” she said. “It’s giving us a whole new meaning for normal. It’s not just a setting on the clothes dryer.”
McCurdy said she hopes Mikhail and Devin’s story prompts other families to talk about and consider organ donation. As a doctor, McCurdy already had made donor plans.
“But it was for myself. I never thought about it for my son,” she said, but when the time came “it just made sense and now I have two good reasons to keep on living.”
Over the years, when people have asked, McCurdy always gives the same reply.
“Knowing that at least two lives were saved because of my son’s generosity gave his life and death full meaning,” she said. “The devastation of losing my son at such a tender age was softened by the knowledge that someone else’s child would be given a new life.”
On Wednesday, for the first time, she will meet that child.
— Find out more:
www.onelegacy.org/prod/components/donation/stories.html#mikhailm
www.organdonorhawaii.com/
www.donatelifehawaii.org/
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TAKE MY HEART
By Stephanie McCurdy, 1993
Hi Mom, Remember me?
I’m your darling son
The one you bounced on your knee
And called your beloved one
As I watch and listen from the sky
I see your tears as they glisten
Oh Mom, Please don’t cry
Take my heart and all those things
That they, the living, can use
For my spirit freely wings
from that body which I chose to lose
Please don’t weep too longingly for me
For in this heavenly place
I am where I can always see
The beauty of God’s face
