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Thursday, July 31, 1997

Family of donor, heart transplant recipient find meaning together

By BECKY COOPER / The Victoria Advocate

CUERO, Texas - "Can you feel it beating?" a tearful Debbie Sears asked Betty Jo Afflerbach as the two hugged for the first time. "It's a strong heart, beating so well," she said as she placed Afflerbach's hand on her chest.

Afflerbach was feeling the beat of her son Eric's heart, which Sears received after Eric's death three years ago.

Sears and her family from Ivanhoe met the Afflerbachs recently in Cuero for the first time since their lives intertwined on April 25, 1994. Before the meeting they had only exchanged letters and had one telephone conversation. Both families knew they wanted to one day meet.

It was "another stage of accepting Eric's death and recovering," Betty Jo Afflerbach said.

Sears, who was accompanied by her husband Beryl and 7-year-old son Brent, said she wanted to get to know as much as possible about Cuero, Eric and his family.

And she did.

They toured the tennis courts where Eric had won his district singles match a week before his death and sat on the bench placed courtside in his memory. They met his grandmother, aunts, uncles and cousins; attended his church; visited his grave.

Throughout the visit, Sears and her husband thanked the Afflerbachs for what they had done.

"I have my life back to be a mother to my son and wife to my husband. We are still a family," Sears said.

During their initial meeting at the First Baptist Church, Sears gasped, covered her heart and mouth and began to cry as she got her first glimpse of Eric through a photo memorial set up on a table.

"I was able to put a face on the person whose heart I now have. I didn't think I could take another step when I first saw the photos."

But as families looked at the photos, they began to talk about Debbie's and Eric's likes and dislikes and shared personality traits.

Both share a strong will and are goal-oriented, both love science - she teaches a life science class, while Eric planned to be a doctor - and both have dark wavy hair and dark brown eyes.

Eric's father, Curtis, said the meeting brings some meaning to Eric's death.

"Nikki (Eric's sister) was going through a scripture calendar and ....on the day of Eric's accident, was the verse 'Only God can make sense out of senseless tragedy' and I think by meeting Debbie and her family, we now know why it happened."

On that fateful day, Eric, who was set to be his class valedictorian the next month, had been out for a Saturday night with friends after his science team had qualified a state tournament earlier in the day.

He had been drinking, so his friends wouldn't let him drive home from the country where they had gathered.

Eric decided to walk in the thick fog, but he never made it. He was hit by two cars.

After he was pronounced dead at a San Antonio hospital, his family had to make a very difficult decision - whether to donate his heart and liver.

Curtis said he never had a doubt about donating, but the others took longer to decide.

Said Nikki: "Eric had a kidney problem and finally I decided that if Eric was lying there waiting for a kidney transplant to keep living, I would want someone to help him live."

Before his funeral, they learned his heart had gone to a woman in Houston and his liver to a man in Florida.

Some 200 miles away, Sears and her family were dealing with the knowledge that she would never leave a Houston hospital without a new heart. Suffering from coronary artery disease, she had been given about a week to live when they received word there was a heart available.

Her ordeal began six years earlier at age 27, when she had the first of two heart attacks. The second came at 33.

Although she had a triple bypass surgery after the second heart attack, her condition did not totally improve. After going home from the surgery, she was soon back in the hospital with congestive heart failure.

That's when her doctor mentioned transplant as an option. As the weeks progressed and her condition worsened, it became her only hope.

She was only on the transplant list 10 days when she received word that a heart of an 18-year-old athlete was available. "When they told me they had a heart if I wanted it, I said yes because that is what we have been waiting for," Sears said. "But I also knew there was a death to enable me to have the heart. I immediately said a prayer for the family."

After three years, she has suffered no signs of rejecting the new heart. She has to take anti-rejection medication for the rest of her life.

The man who received Eric's liver is retired from the military and lives in Florida. He is doing well and leading an active life. The Afflerbachs hope to meet him one day as well.

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