 The problem really is finding enough organs for all the people that are desperately in need of transplant, so we are very short of organ donors. They're just not enough organs to go around. That is the rate limiting step. While he's dying, I think he's just dying a little bit more every day. I've seen people come to transplant that were so sick they were saved by someone else's kindness. It's an amazing gift for a family to give, a phenomenally wonderful gift. Brian Hynesley, a 42-year-old fireman, is one of the more than 68,000 people on the waiting list for an organ transplant. Last year, only about 5,000 families donated a loved one's organs. That is why Brian and his wife Kim have been waiting more than two years for the telephone call that could save his life. How are you doing, man? It's one of my good friends, John Hanna, has been a paramedic partners together for seven years out here. We've been on very major things where people are dying and houses are burning and things are going on and you have 100% confidence in each other and I miss that. But I miss that around the fire station, working around the nine guys, being a part of the team. About nine years ago, I got diagnosed with some kind of internal disease, which has been pinpointed to autoimmune hepatitis and has caused my liver to fail. He's been home sick for two years, so he's been getting worse and worse every day. Every day we don't even talk because he's too sick to talk. We never thought it would be like this, this long of a wait, this sick that you have to be at death's door. When somebody needs a liver transplant, they need one because their liver has failed. What happens when the liver fails is that there are a whole bunch of systems that fall apart. When the liver fails, the kidneys fail very soon thereafter and liver failure can also result in heart damage, can result in serious neurological impairment, and by and large a successful transplant will write it all. My daughter, she's only three years old, I get to spend very little good quality time with her. Where's my kiss? Where's my hug? She doesn't understand why dad lays on the couch all the time. Hopefully as an end result of this, of a liver transplant, I'll be up and running a hundred percent and she'll get to know what a real dad's like. Come here. Lock my baby. A painful side effect of Brian's failed liver is an accumulation of poisonous fluids in his abdomen that requires a weekly trip to the hospital. I go into the doctor, he sticks a needle in my side and he drains out 10 liters of fluid. The things that come up that you deal with, you look forward to the good times ahead and that's what keeps you going. If it's been a really bad day and he's been real grouchy, he'll apologize and he'll say I'm sorry that I put you through this. I'm sorry another day has gone by and the phone is not ringing. I lost my husband. We had been married for three years and nine months. I heard this thump on the floor and I rushed in the room and my husband was lying on the floor so I immediately called 911 and they responded. They responded as if they were on the corner waiting for my call. He died of a brain aneurysm. He was basically brain dead almost instantly. Pictures with you and your dad? I had to make a decision to just release him, totally release him. The nurse said that I'd like to talk to you and she asked me if my husband could be an organ donor and I said yes. We had talked about being a donor family. My husband's theory was that he wanted to be here when he was gone and that's what he always told me. He said no I want to be here when I'm gone and one day I asked him I said what do you mean? He said because I'm going to be a donor, an organ donor and I thought about what he was saying and it made a lot of sense. And this is me and my dad. Anybody that wants to donate their organs they should make sure that their organ cart is signed but the most important thing I tell people is to talk to your families or talk to the people that are going to be the ones that are going to be the next of kin. If you're married it's your husband, if you're not it's your parents or your brothers and sisters. My biggest comfort and my biggest reward is knowing that there are other people out there that are living as a result of my husband being an organ donor. Oftentimes I'll look at someone and I'll smile and say that may be the one. It's a good feeling. It's a great feeling. B. Schweder a 47 year old mother of four suffers from heart disease and has been on a transplant waiting list for two years. She did get the phone call that would change her life but the timing couldn't have been worse. It was just weeks after her husband died of a sudden heart attack. I got the call at 8, about 8.45 and they gave me until 9.30 to make the decision. My initial reaction in taking the transplant was not to take it because I didn't want to put my kids through any more trauma right now and it was really scary. I don't have a choice. I was either going to do this or I was going to die. We're going to retrieve a heart from a 26 year old donor. The timing is such that the heart will come back and be ready to be implanted as soon as we come back to UCLA with the heart. I've got Cynthia on the phone now. She just needs to know if we need a helicopter back or a car back because she can get it. She just needs to call it now. Helicopter. Helicopter? Okay. The patient just got brought into the room so Dr. Lex would like a 230 cross clamp. Nice specimen. Very nice. Look at that. Who's going to get it? Do you know already? I do. It's a mother of four. For us it's almost surreal in that we're able to take the heart from one person and make it stop beating, preserve it by making it cold and then put it in another person and wake it up and make it start beating when we put the blood in it, the warm blood in it. The number of heart transplants done in this country is plateaued over the last few years and demand is ever increasing so that gap is growing. One of the remarkable things about transplantation is the fact that someone's life is extended or saved through the tragedy of somebody else. Death is something that faces every one of us and I think it's a wonderful thing that somebody who has died has this opportunity of doing in their act of death something kind, something generous to someone else. So neat to look up there and see that it's beating in a regular, it's beating like it's supposed to. It's really cool. Kind of awesome to sit there and watch that and go, wow, that's mine. It's working right. This is just so cool because this is what it's supposed to look like, you know, and it's a 26-year-old heart in this 47-year-old body. I mean, it's great. It's my 7-year-old's version of my heart transplant. The hospital's in there and mom's getting her heart and all the equipment and the Bible is a verse that God gave me this year and it was a confirmation to me that I was going to get this heart. A new heart also will I give you and a new spirit will I put within you. I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and I will give you a new heart of flesh. So I've been carrying that. I carried that everywhere. It was in my car. It was in my purse. It was in my day timer. It was in every place that I could keep that as a visual. I had that so that when I, you know, got discouraged about it, I realized it was going to happen. I feel good. Yeah, you're looking really good. You really enjoyed working with me. You're going to have a great life. How do you? And I don't, you know, there's no words. And it just don't exist. Thank you guys for everything. You're welcome. Okay. Okay. I'll see you later. All right. Bye. Bye. I'm burning your name. Happy birthday. You know, pepper is you're squishing pepper and you're squishing me and you're hurting my incision. Oh, pepper. Happy birthday to you. Mostly I just feel really humbled that the family agreed to donate the heart and that God got me the heart. And I can raise my four boys to get a new life. Happy birthday to you. The seasons have changed, but Brian and Kim are still waiting for a liver. We really thought we would not be going through another winter. I honestly thought he would have this liver before now. It is very depressing for him to see this, even though it's beautiful. I go to bed alone every night and I pray for him to just have the strength to keep going. But when he's his sickest is when I'm afraid this is it. If he does not get a liver now, he's not going to make it. I want our family back. That's my biggest hope that we will have this again, that we will be normal. But instead of a normal life, Brian soon became so sick he was admitted to the hospital in critical condition. And it was clear that he had had a worsening of hepatic encephalopathy or the confusion state caused by liver disease, chronic liver disease. So immediately we admitted him to the hospital and admitted him to the intensive care unit. Hey Brian. How are you feeling? I cried. Do you remember any of the events of yesterday? What happened? You were very incoherent yesterday. What happened? I mean, why? Well, I think that's a worsening of your liver disease and has prompted us to put you here and to try and get you a liver more quickly because we think you need one. Now we just wait, okay, but hopefully the wait won't be too long. Okay. Okay, good. I used to get real upbeat that it was going to happen, but now I'm so beat down and so tired. They can tell me that they're making the phone call right this second to me until I hear it. No, I'm not going to. I can't take any more roller coaster rides. Yeah, I've been on it too many times. When I'm actually on my back and it's ready to cut me open, I'll believe them. But a liver did not become available and a week later, Brian recovered enough to be sent home. He is still waiting for that phone call that could save his life. A call that will only come when a family decides to donate a loved one's organs.