Organ donations increasing in Iowa, nationwide

The night before Mother’s Day 2018, Mike Meredith got a call telling him to he needed to drive to the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics immediately. He was going to get a new heart.

It had been two years and three months since Meredith barely survived multiple heart attacks, coding 13 times during a three-week period. He’d been living with a left ventricular assist device — a machine that pumped his heart for him — but was on the wait list to receive a transplant.

During the drive from his home in Kellogg to the hospital, he felt conflicted. He was excited to get the organ he needed, but he also knew that the heart had belonged to somebody else who was now gone.

“I never could really pray for a heart, because that meant somebody died. My thoughts the whole time were, there’s a room right next to me where somebody’s mourning … Somebody’s having a bad Mother’s Day,” Meredith said.

Meredith, now 65, had his heart transplant at around 2 p.m. on Mother’s Day, May 13, 2018. He was one of five people who received an organ donation from Christopher Lewis, a 28-year-old Cedar Rapids man who died on May 12, 2018, after he was hit by a car while riding his bike.

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Besides donating his heart to Meredith, Lewis also donated his lungs to a 43-year-old man, his liver to a 40-year-old man, one kidney to a 49-year-old man and his other kidney to a 52-year-old man.

Organ and tissue donations have been increasing across Iowa and nationwide. In 2023, 123 people in Iowa donated 350 organs, and 1,027 people donated tissue, according to a news release from the Iowa Donor Network. Each tissue donation benefits between 50 and 300 people. The 123 donors the network saw in 2023 is a 40 percent increase from 2019, and the 350 transplants is a 21 percent increase, according to the release.

“I think there are a multitude of reasons why we've seen organ donation increase here over the last several years,” said Heather Butterfield, director of strategic communications for the Iowa Donor Network.

“Part of it is more people are saying yes to donation because they want to be able to help others after they die. The other is really advancements in the field of donation and transplantation that allow us to recover more organs than ever before, and thereby honor the decision of those who want to be donors and maximize the number of gifts that they’re able to give.”

Butterfield said she believes the increase in people signing up to be organ donors is partially related to recent educational efforts from the Iowa Donor Network, including growing its social media platforms and putting tribute plaques in DMVs across the state to recognize people impacted by organ donation.

Becky Lewis, Christopher Lewis’s mother, said Christopher had always been a registered organ donor since he first got his license as a teenager. He had learned about the importance of organ donation from Becky, who worked as a nurse and an educator in a nurse residency program, and from his grandmother, Becky’s mother, who died in 1983 because of an autoimmune disease in her liver.

“At that point in time there was only one team … in the United States doing liver transplants and it was out in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The doctors were talking to her about getting a transplant, and of course, she got an infection before it ever happened and couldn’t get rid of the infection,” Becky Lewis said.

A lot has changed since 1983, but the need for organs remains, even with the increase in donations. There are currently around 600 people in Iowa in need of an organ transplant, and more than 100,000 people nationwide, according to Butterfield.

Some of the organs that are donated in Iowa, like Christopher’s heart, end up going to someone in the state, but many are sent elsewhere. A lot of factors go into where to send an organ, according to Butterfield.

“It really is determined by the list, if you will, of who has the greatest need and who is the best match for that organ,” Butterfield said.

Meredith is the only recipient of Christopher’s organs who has met Christopher’s parents, Becky and Dan Lewis, in person. Becky and Dan reached out to all of the recipients in the year after Christopher’s death, but have only received responses from a few, and most of them don’t live close by.

The three individuals met in person almost a year after Christopher’s death. Meredith brought a stethoscope to their meeting so that Becky and Dan could listen to his heart beating.

“It was emotional, and I think we both did a good job of letting down our guards and we just kind of shared and cried a little bit,” Dan Lewis said.

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The meeting was cathartic for both parties. For Dan and Becky Lewis, it was a reminder that even though their son was gone, he was able to do some good at the end of his life. For Meredith, it was an opportunity to say thank you.

“I told them I had a hard time with knowing their son died, and they said, ‘You make sure you separate the two incidents. He was gone whether it gave you the heart or not.’ That helped me out a lot,” Meredith said. “It was what he wanted. Chris signed up on his own at 16-years-old … He’ll always be a hero for that act.”

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