Four miles into the Seattle Marathon on Nov. 30, Terri Nolan received a phone call that her sister was in the Intensive Care Unit at the University of Washington Medical Center.
Tammi Shanks, who’d been next in line on the LifeCenter Northwest organ registry for a lung transplant for about a week, now required a ventilator to breathe. But otherwise, the 46-year-old Edmonds woman was reportedly in good condition.
Nolan got off the phone, expecting an update within an hour.
It came at mile eight, as Nolan and her long-time running partner, Diane Kennedy were passing through the I-90 tunnel; Shanks was improving, according to a nurse in the ICU.
Mile 14: Nolan and Kennedy chanted as they left Seward Park, “We’re coming home sister.”
The phone rang a second later.
Shanks, days — maybe hours — away from a lifesaving organ transplant, died, leaving her mother, three sisters, two children, a husband and hundreds of friends in a state of shock.
Shanks was diagnosed seven years earlier with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a rare autoimmune disorder that’s accompanied with a life expectancy of one to four years without a complete lung transplant. Though she was virtually symptom free for a little more than three years, the disease eventually forced Shanks to give up her nursing job at Northwest Hospital. In the final months, it even robbed her of the ability to cry.
“Our aunt died and at the funeral Tammi told me, ‘I can’t cry and breathe at the same time,” Nolan said.
There was never any question that Shank’s illness was life threatening; everyone knew the risks associated with the transplant surgery and recovery. But no one ever imagined that Shanks “T2” (the second of four girls, whose names all began with a T) would die waiting.
“An hour earlier, a nurse at the hospital was telling my family that Tammi had improved since she’d been hooked up to the ventilator,” Nolan said. “They were all excited to hear how she was doing and then the doctor told them she didn’t make it.”
When she heard the news, Nolan screamed. She stood there with Kennedy on Lake Washington Boulevard, sobbing.
Both women looked at their green wristbands that read “Donate Life,” and “Tammi Shanks” separated with a nurse’s shield and a shamrock that symbolized Shanks’ Irish heritage.
“Terri picked me up that morning to drive to the start line of the marathon and handed me the bracelet as I got in the car,” Kennedy said, reaching for Nolan’s hand.
The Mill Creek neighbors ran their first marathon two years ago, adopting the mantra “We run because we can and for those who can’t.”
The race that Sunday wasn’t meant to be a tribute to Nolan’s sister, but the bracelets seemed an appropriate running accessory based on Shanks’ recent move up the transplant registry.
Nolan and Kennedy staggered along the race course, hugging and crying, for what seemed like the longest 15 minutes of their lives.
“We needed to process what just happened,” Kennedy said. “Runners passed us by the dozens with grave looks of concern and offers to help these two sweaty, stinky, distraught women.”
About two miles past the half-way marker — about to give up and head for the hospital — it occurred to them:
“Tammi would want us to finish the race.”
“Tammi was very proud of Terri’s running and marathoning,” Kennedy said. “To Tammi healthy lungs were a gift and they should be treasured by using them … She never asked why this disease happened to her and she never felt sorry for herself; she would have been so mad if we gave up in the middle.”
Entries from an electronic journal that Shanks kept in the final year of her life to keep her friends and family updated on her condition, conjure the spirit of an eternal optimist who never doubted for a second that she would receive her new lungs, which she’d already named Good and Plenty in honor of her favorite candy.
She often resorted to humor and spirituality to tell her story.
“When I was a very young child, I remember sitting in the pews at Christ the King Church every Sunday morning. I vividly recall a priest using a word that always caught my attention … ‘enthusiasm,’” Shanks wrote on Sept. 18. “I had no idea what it meant, I just knew he used it a lot and it had such a strange, yet interesting sound to it. Enthusiasm: ‘Great excitement for or interest in a subject or cause.’
“As we further advance ourselves in this techno society … what are we losing??? Besides social skills and the ability to communicate face to face with each other … we are losing ‘patience …’ an ability or willingness to suppress restlessness or annoyance when confronted with delay.
“Who out there hasn’t experienced a feeling of anxiousness?” she asked. “If honest with ourselves, we can all admit to this feeling. Anxious: earnestly desirous; eager.
“When asked what it is like to be waiting for a lung transplant, I can sum it up with these three words: enthusiasm, patience, and anxious. This is what it feels like for me. I am very enthusiastic about the prospect of breathing like a normal human being, I am excited to be able to clean my house again (oh, to scrub a bathtub), walk up stairs, and all the simple things we take for granted. I might even take up mountain climbing.”
What was it like for Shanks’ loved ones waiting for their friend, mother, sister, daughter and wife to receive an organ transplant?
Nolan searched for words to describe that feeling.
“You’re not praying for someone to die, but, at the same time, you know that’s what has to happen in order for your loved one to get this gift of life,” Nolan said. “So I guess I feel some relief that I don’t have to struggle anymore with those prayers, but I also feel frustrated … Tammi was next in line for a week, and in all that how many organs were simply not available because people never registered as organ donors.”
There are close to 100,000 people in the United States waiting for an organ transplant; 18 of them die every day still waiting; and 1,900 of those waiting live in the Northwest, according to figures from Donate Life Northwest, a regional non-profit group dedicated to increasing awareness about organ donation.
When Nolan and Kennedy crossed the finish line that Sunday afternoon, they each placed a hand on their heart for Shanks. Nolan remembers little of the race after mile 14; she was in a hurry to get to the hospital and say her goodbyes before a transplant team harvested her sisters’ corneas — the only viable organs Shanks had left to donate.
“It’s not something you think about — organ donation — until your life or the life of someone you love depends on a transplant,” Nolan said. “People never talk about it; it’s like asking someone, ‘Who are you voting for?’ So how do we educate people about the importance of being an organ donor?
“My sister died waiting; I don’t want anyone else to go through what my family is going through.”
Become an organ donor
Learn more about organ donation at the following Web sites:
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — www.organdonor.gov
• Donate Life Northwest — www.donatelifenw.org/facts • United Network for Organ Sharing — www.unos.org/data
• Bone marrow and chord blood donation — bloodcell.transplant.hrsa.gov
There are several ways to register as an organ donor in Washington:
• On the Web — visit www.donatelifetoday.com
• At the Department of Licensing — Say ‘yes’ to organ donation when you renew your drivers license
• Call Donate Life Northwest at 1-877-275-5269
There are nearly 100,000 people in the United States waiting for an organ transplant:
• 76,373 people are waiting for kidney transplants
• 16,231 people are waiting for a liver transplants
• 1,614 people are waiting for pancreas transplants
• 2,313 people are waiting for kidney-pancreas tranplants
• 235 people waiting for intestine transplants
• 2,626 people waiting for heart transplants
• 101 people waiting for heart-lung transplants
• 2,110 people waiting for lung transplants
Since Jan. first, 3,375 organ donors registered in the United States:
• 1,973 non-living donors
• 1,402 living donors
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