One mother from Madisonville, Louisiana was able to listen to her son’s heartbeat one more time after he died in a car accident almost two years ago. With help from the nonprofit Lousiana Organ Procurement Agency, Maria Clark met her son’s organ recipient, fourteen-year-old Jean Paul Marceaux, on May 14, 2022, in New Orleans.
Upon his death, Clark’s twenty-five-year-old son, Nicholas Peters, had donated his organs, namely his heart. On her son’s wish, Clark said, agreeing with the decision, “We can’t bury all of this magic…we have to share.” Clark described her son as “the life of the party,” noting that he was “always a people person, helping everybody, going out of his way to make sure you knew you were special.” After he had passed, Nick’s heart traveled three hours to nearby New Iberia, Lousiana to help one more family in need.
There, another mother, Candice Armstrong, had received a life-altering call. A donor heart had become available for her son, Jean Paul. The young teen had cardiomyopathy, a deadly condition he developed after contracting a virus as a two-year-old and was in desperate need of a new heart.
He had spent the past months in the hospital, fighting to stay alive, awaiting that one-in-a-million call. With Nick’s donation, Jean Paul was off the waitlist and just in time. His mother felt a “flood of emotions,” upon hearing the news. “It’s a very unusual circumstance to be in,” she said, “I know another mother is having what I have been praying to not happen.”
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Armstrong was well-aware of the sacrifice involved, given her son received his first organ transplant ten years ago. After being on life support, two-year-old Jean Paul underwent his first heart transplant surgery. A decade later, Jean Paul’s heart again needed replacing. Finding herself back in the difficult position of awaiting an organ, Armstrong said, “It’s such a dichotomy because you are hoping for it because it’s going to sustain your son’s life, but you know what this is attached to.”
