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A lesson in giving
After tragedy, Lucero's donation lets seven
other women live
By Bob Hohler, Globe Staff | April 18, 2005
"It's OK, I'm ready,'' Lily Thompson told her sister before she
lapsed into a coma at Tufts-New England Medical Center, her liver ravaged
beyond repair. "I can go now.''
Across town, Marissa Auerbach lay at Children's Hospital with a serious
heart disorder, the clock ticking on her young life.
The prospect of a premature death gripped Thompson, Auerbach and five
other desperately ill women in Massachusetts three years ago as Cynthia
Lucero, the angel who would save them all, crested Heartbreak Hill in the
106th Boston Marathon.
Lucero took her last step minutes later. Critically overhydrated, the
28-year-old Boston psychologist, who was running for charity after
completing her doctoral dissertation on how competing in a marathon can
help the grieving, collapsed approaching Cleveland Circle, 4 miles from the
finish line.
Lucero never regained consciousness and died the next day April 16, 2002
at Brigham and Women's Hospital. But in death she gave new life to
Thompson, Auerbach, and the five other women, each of whom received one of
the marathoner's organs in transplant operations three years ago yesterday.
"I wasn't supposed to live another day," Thompson said.
"Then I woke up one morning with a second life because of a total
stranger's random act of kindness."
Thompson, a 60-year-old retiree, saw a rainbow the other day thanks to
Lucero. Auerbach, a 14-year-old freshman at Sharon High School, saw the
movie "Fever Pitch" the other night thanks to Lucero. Sasha, a
22-year-old whose full identity has remained confidential since she
received Lucero's pancreas, saw another day thanks to the marathoner, as
did the women who received Lucero's kidneys and lungs. She also donated her
corneas and cardiovascular tissue through the New England Organ Bank.
In the end, one family's marathon tragedy became a blessing for seven
women and their loved ones -- and a lesson in giving for countless others.
"Our lives will never be the same," Hector Lucero said by
telephone from Guayaquil, Ecuador, where Cynthia was raised. "We
accept that and live with it. But the vast sadness I felt when I lost my
daughter is alleviated when I think about all those people who have been
receiving the benefits of my daughter's gifts."
Auerbach's friends generally take for granted her presence on the high
school diving team. And when she joins them for sleepovers, shopping trips
to the mall, and after-school art classes, none of them thinks much about
her struggle to survive several years earlier.
"They know what happened," Auerbach said shyly, "but I
don't think they know how I feel."
How does she feel?
"I feel very thankful," she said.
So do her parents, who until Marissa's transplant had watched her cope
from birth with cardiomyopathy, a serious disorder that damages the heart's
muscle and tissues.
"Almost every time I look at my daughter I can't imagine what it
would be like to not have her here," Victor Auerbach said. "And I
think about how fortunate we are that she received a marathon runner's
heart. You can't get a better heart than that."
As it turned out, Lucero planned her greatest act of charity three years
before she died. Even before she ran the San Diego Marathon in 2000 and was
involved in a serious car accident in Marlborough later that year -- her
injuries were so severe that she was airlifted to Brigham and Women's --
she signed an organ donor card.
Lucero's sister, Alexandra Stirling, discovered the card in Lucero's
apartment as Cynthia lay dying. The discovery proved to be crucial since
Lucero's mother, Martha, opposed donating Cynthia's organs until Alexandra
showed her the signed card.
"It was harder for my mom, but in the end she came to feel the same
way my dad and I did," Alexandra said. "Cynthia didn't need the
organs anymore, so let's give them to people who did."
Giving was nothing new to Lucero. She found time after work at the
Center for Multicultural Training in Psychology at Boston Medical Center to
volunteer at a shelter for battered women, health clinics in the South End
and Cambridge, and the Big Sister program. She also volunteered to counsel
families of the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"Cynthia felt like she could have died in that car accident,"
her sister said. "It reminded her how very fragile life can be and
made her more committed to the goals she had set for herself. She stepped
up her volunteering and charitable activities."
Lucero was raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's fight
against cancer when she joined more than 17,000 runners three years ago in
starting the Boston Marathon. But along the way she consumed more fluids
than her body could process and suffered hyponatremia, a dangerously low
balance of sodium in the blood that proved fatal.
Lucero's death has heightened awareness about hyponatremia, which the
New England Journal of Medicine last week said afflicted 13 percent of the
488 runners it studied in the Boston Marathon in which Lucero died.
Marathon officials since have provided each runner with a brochure titled,
"The Right Way to Hydrate for a Marathon."
But Thompson hopes Lucero is remembered as much for extending the lives
of her organ recipients as she may be for preventing deaths because of
hyponatremia.
"I am the luckiest person in the world," Thompson said,
"because I not only feel as if I have God looking after me but I have
my own personal angel up there."
Thompson has committed herself to squeezing the most out of the extra
years she received from Lucero. A Cuban emigre who raised two children in
Boston before she developed primary sclerosing cholangitis, a chronic liver
disease that ultimately left her in a coma for three days before her
transplant, she devotes much of her time to volunteering at Tufts-New
England Medical Center and serving at Saint Francis Chapel at the
Prudential Center, particularly at the Spanish-language Masses.
"I wake up in the morning and I don't care if it's raining or
cold," she said. "To me, it's another day, and I say, `Thank you
for this day.' "
Lucero's family and friends have gone to great lengths to honor her. The
Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology founded the Dr. Cynthia
Lucero Center for Health Psychology, which sponsors scholarships, lectures,
and an annual memorial run in her honor. The state chapter of the Leukemia
and Lymphoma Society created an annual award in her name. And her sister
has launched a website, remembercynthia.com, which is rich with
testimonials and other tributes to her.
In Ecuador, Lucero's parents have formed the nation's first organ donor
program, fashioned after the New England Organ Bank. They have created a
scholarship program for needy students at Catholic University in Guayaquil,
which Cynthia attended. And they arranged a memorial Mass last Friday, to
mark the third anniversary of her death, at the St. Francis of Assissi
School in Guayaquil, which she attended before college.
But the Luceros, who already have met Thompson and Auerbach, want most
of all to meet the other recipients of Cynthia's organs. They hope to visit
Sasha later this year.
"It's not going to change anything," Hector Lucero said,
"but it gives us great joy to meet the people who have a part of our
daughter."
He said he never will forget embracing Marissa Auerbach.
"I knew my daughter's heart was next to me," Hector Lucero
said, "and that was a wonderful moment in my life."
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