Local families make the painful decision

Seeing the good organ donations could have,the Nakagoshi’s became a donor family.

The concept of organ donations was always foreign to Kilauea resident Donna Nakagoshi because she felt the body should remain sovereign and complete.

But her thoughts turned in the opposite direction June 2, 2000, after her 16-year-old son, Clinton, was mortally injured in a car accident in Kapa’a.

After talking with a Catholic priest and seeing the good organ donations could have, Nakagoshi and her husband became a donor family, using their son’s organs to save lives of five Hawai’i residents.

Nagakoshi’s family joins a handful of Kaua’i families who took the same path in recent years, and have been recognized by county officials and the Organ Donor Center of Hawai’i on O’ahu.

For Nakagoshi, her experience enabled her to see beyond the boundaries of her family’s well-being and safety, that other people’s lives are equally important and precious.

The events prompted Nakagoshi, a Kaua’i County worker, to become an organ donor herself.

Nakagoshi said knowing her son’s donated organs have helped organ recipients extend their lives has helped ease the pain and grief over his death.

Her son was driving on the Kapa’a Bypass Road June 2 with two other youths, bound for Kapa’a High School, where they were students.

The car went out of control and crashed into a road embankment. One youth died at the scene, Clinton suffered severe head injuries and another youth survived.

Clinton was taken by ambulance to Wilcox Hospital, where doctors informed Nakagoshi about seriousness of her son’s injuries. “I knew right away it was bad, because I had a cousin who had swelling of the brain and had died from head injuries,” Nakagoshi said.

While she was in the emergency room, a Kaua’i Hospice representative and a nurse, realizing the extent of the injuries, brought up the subject of organ donations, Nakagoshi said.

The suggestion took her by surprise, said Nakagoshi, adding “I looked at them. I didn’t know what to say because everybody was in shock over the accident.”

On the same day, her son was transported by medical helicopter or plane to Queen’s Medical Center on O’ahu for more extensive treatment.

Nakagoshi brought up the idea of organ transplants to her husband, an Princeville Company employee, and later consulted with a priest at St. Catherine’s Church in Kapa’a.

The church is part of the same Catholic parish as St. Sylvester Church in Kilauea, where Nakagoshi and her family are members.

“Father Bruce said that the Lord works in mysterious ways, that the Lord helped a lot of people,” Nakagoshi said. “I realized that I was going to help somebody even though my son might make it. I was going to donate whatever we could.”

Before Nakagoshi, her husband and another son, David, went to O’ahu to be with Clinton, she informed Wilcox Hospital personnel of her decision.

The decision placed her in virgin territory psychologically, because none of her family members had ever been organ donors before, Nakagoshi said.

“We didn’t know what to expect,” she said.

Her son was no longer breathing on his on, and after tests showed no brain activity, he was declared brain dead at 1 a.m. June 3. The organ transplant operations took place at Queen’s hospital the next day.

The heart and eyes could not be used because they were damaged in the car accident. But a liver, two kidneys, the pancreas and heart valves went to donor recipients.

Keeping in touch with the organ recipients and her involvement with grief workshops offered by the Kaua’i Hospice have helped Nakagoshi deal with her son’s death.

Since her son’s death, Nakagoshi has strengthened a friendship with Millie Morris, a co-worker at Whaler’s General Store in Hanalei. The woman’s daughter a went through a needed liver transplant operation in the mainland.

Of her decision to be a donor family, Nakagoshi said she has “no regrets.”

“It was my decision. I am the mother. And believe he (Clint) would have wanted it that way.”