In August 2012, Ryan Viola, 17, cinched his driving test. Happily, he returned home and told his mother, Alice, the good news, and also that he marked his license to show he would be an organ donor. Alice Viola recalled her comeback to Ryan: “You better hope I die before you do, because I’m not donating your organs.” There was no way for her to know that three months later she, her husband, Samuel, and their younger son, Vincent, would face that decision, as Ryan lay on life support at Aria Health Torresdale campus’ ICU, from injuries suffered after being struck by a car on his way to a school bus stop. “I believed the myths of being an organ donor,” she said, as we talked in a conference room at Bucks County Technical High School, where Ryan was a student, studying electrical occupation. “I thought that if they knew you were an organ donor, they wouldn’t do everything possible to save your life, that they would let you die,” she said. Ryan’s death was life-changing in ways that are still being calculated by the Violas. Now, they are volunteers for Gift of Life, a Philadelphia-based organ donor nonprofit, which arranges for organ donation and disabuses the public myths. Last year, 447 lives were saved through organ donors in eastern Pennsylvania, South Jersey and Delaware. “You don’t know how many lives you can save,” she said, “how out of a tragedy like Ryan’s, so much good can happen.” It all happened so suddenly. Nov. 29, 2012, was a Thursday. About 6:30 a.m., Ryan and his younger brother, Vincent, headed from their home in Bensalem to their school bus stop at the intersection of Bensalem Boulevard and Portside Drive. Vincent was a few steps ahead of his older brother as he crossed Bensalem Boulevard. “I saw down the road, a car was coming. I made it across and I just reached the sidewalk when I saw the faces of everyone at the bus stop, and they screamed, and there was a bang.” Ryan had been hit by the car. “I turned around,” Vincent said, “and I saw him laying there. He wasn’t moving. He was bleeding.” It was a cold morning. Vincent, 14 at the time, removed his jacket and put it over his brother, to preserve his body heat. At Tech, the students are taught CPR in gym class. Vincent began CPR, until a Bensalem police officer, who lives in the neighborhood, ran over to render aid, and the ambulance came, and Ryan’s parents arrived. “I got into the ambulance and rode with Ryan to the hospital,” Alice said. Doctors conducted exhaustive tests, but concluded that the brain injury that Ryan suffered was so traumatic he would not recover. Two days later, the Violas gathered in a hospital conference room and, knowing Ryan’s wishes, decided as a family to donate all of his organs and tissue. A nurse contacted the Gift of Life. “I never knew this organization existed. They asked us what we wanted to donate. Knowing Ryan’s wishes, we said ‘everything.’” John Green, community outreach spokesman for Gift of Life, said 6,400 people in our area are awaiting life-saving organ donations, most of them for kidneys. Last year, 447 lives were saved by organ donors. That number could easily double if more people donated. “The most important thing is that you tell your loved ones that you want to be a donor, because often these circumstances arise,’’ he said. Not everyone is eligible to donate organs. Ryan’s case is among the slim 2 percent of donors who were kept alive, in this case by his brother Vincent’s CPR, so vital organs are not deprived oxygen. But almost everyone is eligible to donate vital tissue, such as corneas, heart valves and skin, Green said. Ryan Viola was a joker who liked to laugh. He was a lifeguard for the Bensalem Township School District, played CYO basketball for Saint Michael the Archangel parish in Bristol Township, and was a member of the Knights of Columbus. “He was going into the Army after he graduated, to be an electrical engineer. He wanted to protect and serve. He was just that kind of person,” his mother said. An 11-year old girl has Ryan’s heart. An 8-year-old who otherwise would not have made it to Christmas that year has one of his kidneys. Two infants survived because of his liver. Two women can see because they were given his corneas. Now, Bucks County Technical High School is holding a Ryan Strong 5k Run March 30. “People are alive because of my son,” Alice Viola said. “We lived the bad part of Ryan’s story. So now we help people with the good part of his story.”
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 14:42:31 +0000
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