Catherine Tran: She says ‘Yes’ to donation twice
After her husband Anthony Truong died suddenly in October, 2004, Catherine “Lan” Tran was asked if she would be willing to donate his corneas. Anthony Truong, an economics professor at the University of Hawaii, had never talked about organ and tissue donation
Catherine said yes because she recalled experiencing how organs and tissues save and enhance the lives of others. She encountered with a woman in a market with a swollen eye. “I just got a cornea transplant; my right eye was blind, but now I could see you. The redness will go away,” the woman said.
Then, unimaginably in February 2006, after moving to California for new job, Catherine received a parents’ most terrifying call. The couple’s only child, Justin, a pre-med student at the University of Hawaii, had died in a pool accident. A musician who had graduated high school early and gone to college, Justin was 19 when he suffered a severe head injury.
Again, she was asked would she agree to donate her loved one’s organs and tissues. She was again able to see beyond her tragedy to the ability to help others. It meant 10 people benefited in the first 10 months after that gift of life from her son’s organs and tissues.
Later, in clearing out some of Justin’s papers, she found a December 2004 college essay about the benefits of organ and tissue donation he’d written just two months after his father died.
“Without knowing his wish at the time of his death, I had fulfilled his wishes to donate in order for others to live on.”
Catherine Tran is a Donate Life Ambassador for CTDN. If you would like to become an ambassador, contact Kathy Clark at mailto:KClark2@ctdn.org%20.
You DO have the power to Donate Life.
Make life happen …
California residents can check "YES! I want to be an organ and tissue donor" when they apply for or renew their driver's license or ID card through the California DMV. Or they can sign up online to be an organ and tissue donor with the Donate Life California Registry at http://www.donatelifecalifornia.org/ or its companion Spanish Web site, http://www.donevidacalifornia.org/.
Information about the impact of providing the "gift of life" to others through donor or tissue donation is at those web sites as well as at www.ctdn.org.
Catherine Tran