Adam Albritton of Sandy Hook has a unique job, one that involves tears of heartbreak on one side and happiness and tears of joy. In some ways, it all comes at the same time.
Albritton is a registered nurse who serves as an organ recovery coordinator. If a hospital anywhere in the state has an organ donor, his job is to oversee the process from the donor to the recipient. He is one of seven who do this for the Mississippi Organ Recovery Agency (MORA).
When MORA receives the call of a donor, Albritton goes go to the hospital to begin reviewing the medical records and lab work on the front end to determine what organs they could potentially donate. He then confers with the medical director, a physician and his director to determine what organs can be transplanted.
From there, Albritton does everything he can to keep the organs functioning to their full potential until the lifesaving transplant can take place. Once a donor has been declared brain-dead, it becomes his job to do everything he can to keep the donor stable until it is time for the donation.
Albritton works mostly with heart and lung transplant recipients. He gets the patient's entire medical history, gets all of the labs and diagnostic work and uploads it to a system. It provides a list broken down in distance and the severity of the situation of the recipient. His job gets intense once an organ is accepted. The transplant surgeons are then scheduled to come at the same time, where they all work to retrieve their respective organs.
MORA is a free-standing medical center in Flowood, meaning once a patient has been determined to be a donor, they are transported from the hospital by ambulance to the facility. The facility has two ICU rooms and two operating rooms so everything can happen there. This has proven to be especially helpful in the last couple of years with the pandemic by freeing up a bed and staff at a regular hospital.
As much work as it takes to transport the donor to the facility, find the best matches for the organs and then for the organs to be retrieved, it is done at a very fast pace with everything completed within a couple of days, but can take longer if need be.
"You have to be on your Ps and Qs because one little thing can throw everything off," he said.
There are times when the donor's family is still there when he comes to take over the care. Most of the time, he said the family receives him well. He makes it a point to introduce himself and let them know what he will be doing and answer any questions they may have. Especially if the donor is a child, a lot of time the family stays until the donor is taken to the operating room.
During that time, he, or one of his coworkers, will stay with the patient until it is time for the donation to take place. This includes going into the surgery with them. He stays with them the entire time.
In this line of work, he has seen tragedies happen to people of all ages, but it is always harder on the workers when the donor hasn’t yet experienced the joys of their first kiss, driving a car for the first time or graduating from high school.
"Most adults have had a chance to live their lives, but not a child," he said.
Not to mention that most of the time when it is a child, most likely the cause was unexpected, such as an accident. However, prior to working with MORA, Albritton worked as a nurse in the neonatal ICU and pediatrics at Forrest General Hospital for six years. His experience there has helped him immensely in this job.
"I'm a little more comfortable taking care of children than my partners," he said.
He came into the position by chance when a former nursing classmate asked him if he would be interested. Ready for a change, he took the opportunity that has played such a large role in his life for nearly nine years. It's a job that he enjoys despite the emotional toll it takes on a person. The average time a person stays in this position is three years because of the stress of the job.
Albritton said he is asked all the time how can he do his job when his work is surrounded by death.
"It is my job to honor the person who has chosen to be a donor or the family chose for them to be a donor and to do everything I can and to use my knowledge and help the next person," he said.
Yet, for all the heartbreaks on the donor side, he knows it brings hope and joy to the recipients and their families as they receive the miracle they have been praying for.
"I get to stand in the gap between somebody's tragedy and somebody's miracle," Albritton said.
For him, that is enough. He knows he can't do anything to make the donor's situation better, but he is able to do something to help someone else have a chance at life.
"To me that is cool. I like that part of it,” he said. “It's exhausting; it's mentally exhausting. It's long hours, sometimes we work 24-hour shifts."
He has worked in a donor situation where he was not able to go to bed for 30 hours.
Albritton said there is a misconception when it comes to organ donation and who can donate. For the most part, anyone can be a donor now. There have been HIV and hepatitis transplants. Sometimes even a person who drank heavily could be a donor, as long as the organs are viable. The oldest donor he knows of was 85.
"Now the only thing that rules a person out on being a donor, if they meet the brain-dead criteria, is cancer," he said.
In the medical field, so many things have changed, even in the time he has been working for MORA. Those advances have allowed more people to be donors.
"Just to be little ole Mississippi, we are really good at what we do," Albritton said.
Right now, MORA is doing more lung transplants than larger organizations in the country per capita. He credits the staff at the facility for their hard work, dedication and being great at their job for this. The team is willing to go above and beyond to help with a donation.
Albritton said when a child dies and their organs can be donated, it gives the parents of the donor something to hold on to in their grief.
"If you have ever seen a recipient meet a donor family, if that doesn't get to you, nothing will," he said.
He has seen it happen a couple of times and he said while he is task-oriented and appears to hold his emotions in check to excel at his job, those moments are tough to hide the emotions.
He said the honor walks are hard on the emotions as well. Honor walks are when the donors, who are alive but brain-dead, are taken to the operating room for the organs to be retrieved. The family of the donor walks with the donor to the operating room to say their last goodbyes. Everyone in the hallway stands back in silence in respect for the precious gift of life being donated.
It is also hard when the donor Albritton cares for is someone he knows. There are times when he and his partners have had to recuse themselves from a case because it hits too close to home.
He was raised to do the best he can in every situation, which is what he tries to do, regardless of the situation or circumstance.
"It can be a person who dies under shady circumstances to somebody innocent, I try to treat everybody the same. Even though these people have passed away, you still treat them with respect," Albritton said.
To combat the emotions, Albritton enjoys being outside. Whether hunting in the woods or fishing, he knows it is important to disconnect from his work. He also uses his time off to spend with his wife, Katie, and their children. They have a camper that they love to adventure with whenever possible.
He credits his wife with knowing him so well that she knows when things are affecting him. She will tell him when he needs a break to unwind.
Seeing the results of tragic and freak accidents, though, has made Albritton more protective of his family.
"I sometimes tend to be a little too over the top, so Katie sometimes has to step in and say I need to chill a little bit," he said.
He believes that it is probably the same dynamic for all of his coworkers. Seeing everything they see with strange and freak accidents, it can make a person paranoid.
"It takes a strong spouse as well because you never know when you might receive a call," Albritton said.
Yet, he loves his job because he knows he stands in the gap between heartbreaking losses and joyous rebirth.
