Imagine this: you’re diagnosed with a terminal illness, and a transplant is your only chance to survive. Instead of milestones, your life is measured in hospital visits, test results, and fear of the unknown. You wait. You hope. You keep on living, even as life feels suspended.
And then one day, the phone rings.
“Making that phone call with an organ offer is absolutely the best part of my job,” says Kelly Watson. “In that moment, I get to step into one of the most pivotal moments of someone’s life. On the other end of the line, I’ll get the wildest array of emotions. People burst into tears, shout for their husbands or wives. Almost without fail, they call me back moments later asking, ‘Wait—what do we need?!’ I always tell them the same thing: ‘Slow down. All we need is you.’”
Kelly Watson is a lung transplant coordinator at UNC, working with patients both before and after lung transplant. She began her career as a pediatric ICU nurse, where she cared for children with congenital heart disease who would eventually need heart transplants, as well as children with cystic fibrosis who would one day need new lungs. Drawn to the cardiothoracic side of pediatric care, she later shadowed a heart transplant coordinator, which helped shape the next step in her career.
“It is really neat, because my career came full circle,” Kelly says. “I cared for some of these kids early on in their cystic fibrosis journeys, and later, working in lung transplant, I watched them receive transplants and grow into young adults. In the ICU, you only see patients at their sickest. They may get better, but you don’t often get that follow-up. In transplant, I get to witness the entire journey—from how sick patients are at the start, through the waiting process, to transplant and ultimately a return to health and normal life.”
On the pre-transplant side, making “The Call” to waiting patients is only one part of her job. Long before that moment, she helps guide patients through the work-up—coordinating testing, appointments, and evaluations, while navigating insurance approvals that can determine whether a patient is even eligible to be listed.
In one case, a final insurance approval came through late in the day, after normal business hours. Though she wasn’t on call, Kelly made the decision to list the patient anyway, knowing how unpredictable organ offers can be. That choice proved lifesaving. The patient received lungs later that very night.
“I went home, and instead of cooking dinner, I put him on the wait list,” says Kelly. “If I had not listed him, he would have missed that offer. Even now, anytime I talk to him, he remembers that.”
Following transplant, Kelly serves as the primary point of contact for her patients, managing their ongoing medical needs and helping coordinate their care.
“Every post transplant patient is assigned a coordinator, and I have a load of patients that I am responsible for,” says Kelly. “They have a nurse for life, because after transplant, they are truly medically unique for the rest of their lives. After transplant, I get to see the depth of their gratitude. This year, one of our patients did a Christmas card and it was all of the things he would have missed, like his daughter’s graduation, his first grandbaby, etc. It was powerful.”
As a post-transplant coordinator, Kelly also supports her patients as they come to terms with the hard reality that their second chance at life came through the loss of another.
“Some patients struggle with that at first, but most are overwhelmingly grateful,” Kelly says. “We’ve had patients get tattoos to honor their donors, write letters to donor families, and look for ways to make a difference in the lives of others. They recognize this as a second chance and start thinking about how they can give back. Their gratitude is incredible, and their loved ones are just over the moon.”
When she talks about the importance of signing up to be an organ, eye, and tissue donor, Kelly emphasizes that the impact goes far beyond saving a single life.
“The person who received the lungs is grateful, but they’d probably come to terms with the idea of dying,” Kelly explains. “But their loved ones, caregivers, their children … They were preparing to mourn the loss of a loved one. When they don’t have to, they fall on their knees in gratitude. A donor saves a whole family. Everyone is impacted.”
For anyone that has questions about the donation process, Kelly encourages them to seek out reliable, credible information.
“Don’t look at Reddit, don’t read sensationalized headlines, don’t go to Facebook,” she says. “Learn more from an accredited transplanted center or an organ procurement organization like HonorBridge. The truth of the matter is that organ donation is a beautiful opportunity to take tragedy and turn it into opportunity. The loss of any life is tragic, but if the loss of one life can prevent the loss of countless others, it’s really an opportunity to be a hero. I have patients who can’t have transplants because there’s not enough to go around. If I never had to tell a patient no, ever again, that would be wonderful.”
Make more life-changing calls possible. Sign up to be an organ, eye, and tissue donor today.