The mother was three months pregnant with twins when the doctor informed her that one of them, Thomas, had a fatal birth defect called anencephaly, that is, his brain was not formed correctly as a part of his skull was missing.
Words cannot describe the pain of losing a baby that leaves parents in a state of despair. Sarah Gray, who was pregnant at 35, lost her son six days after his birth. Gray was three months pregnant with twins when the doctor informed her that one of them, Thomas, had a fatal birth defect called anencephaly, that is, his brain was not formed correctly as a part of his skull was missing. Their other son, Callum, on the other hand, was healthy.
Even in the midst of this tragedy, Gray decided to find a way for “Thomas’s brief life to have some kind of positive impact”.
“So I asked my nurse about organ, eye and tissue donation…This helped me see Thomas in a new light. As opposed to just a victim of a disease, I started to see him as a possible key to unlock a medical mystery,” Gray expresses in her Ted Talk.
The twins were born on March 23, 2010 and Thomas died just six days later. But there was a ray of hope. Gray recalls, “A few hours later, we got a call to say that the recovery was a success, and Thomas’s donations would be going to four different places. His cord blood would go to Duke University. His liver would go to a cell-therapy company called Cytonet in Durham. His corneas would go to Schepens Eye Research Institute, which is part of Harvard Medical School, and his retinas would go to the University of Pennsylvania.”
Watch Gray talk about her experience in this video:
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