Chapter 1: What profound decision did Sarah and Ross Gray make regarding their son Thomas?
Hey, this is Radiolab, I'm Latif Nasser, and today we have a story for you that gets at the satisfaction of knowing. There are lots of moments in life when you are a piece of someone's story, just a little part of it for a moment, and you never get to see how that story shakes out or what impact you actually had. This story starts out like that.
A family puts something out into the void, something very meaningful to them, without any expectation that they will ever hear back about it. But then they decide, actually, wait a second, we do want to know what came out of that. And so they go on a quest to find out. It's an episode we originally released in 2015, and we've got a little update for you at the end.
I should say at the top, this episode discusses medical issues with a pregnancy, if that is a sensitive topic for you. Either way, I think it's one of the most profound episodes we've ever put out at this show. Here it is.
Chapter 2: How did Sarah and Ross Gray find out about Thomas's medical condition?
Gray's donation.
Uh, hi, this is Jad. Hi. Hey, it's me, Jad. And I'm Robert. And today's story started when we bumped into an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Were you a little bit weirded out as to why we are calling you?
Yes.
I don't, you know, I mean, I just don't understand the whole thing. The story really gets going with a phone call to this woman, Elizabeth Mason.
Chapter 3: What ethical dilemmas did Sarah and Ross face during the pregnancy?
I'm a receptionist slash switchboard operator. She works at a research lab in Boston, and one day she's sitting at her desk, and she gets a call from a woman who says that she has donated some eyes to them, and she wants to know what happened to them.
Okay.
call you get every day I just remember it was just very unusual right and just I didn't know what to do with it I just felt like I gotta find somebody to help this woman today we're gonna tell you the story of the of the woman on the other end of that phone call this is her story you might take their story so for my title should I say I'm Sarah gray I'm the mom I'm Ross gray Thomas's dad and how did you guys meet well we're we met in a bar in Glasgow really yeah I was on vacation with a girlfriend
And was it what happened without getting into too many?
I don't know. I think we've got different ideas and different recollection of what happened.
Well, he started dating across the ocean for a year and a half, and then he moved to America.
Five days after he arrived, they were married. A few years after that, they were pregnant with twins. And when did you first know that something was up?
It was at the 12-week screening. They call it the first trimester screening, and they're checking for birth defects. I think the most common one is Down syndrome. But it was September 30, 2009.
They went in for the screening. The ultrasound tech took a scan of the two fetuses. And shortly after, the doc came into the room.
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Chapter 4: How did Thomas's short life lead to discussions about organ donation?
And he said he could see that because one of the twins had a round skull and the other one had a bumpy skull. The bumpy skull showed him that the skull wasn't correct, wasn't round enough.
The brain and skull weren't forming properly, which is what anencephaly is.
Bit of a shock, obviously. I couldn't believe that. It's difficult to process it, I think, because you think, no, that can't be right. They've just told us it's identical twins, but one of them's completely different from the other.
It sounded fictional to me.
Making matters worse.
The doctors said that the unhealthy twin was posing a threat to the healthy twin, and if we were to be safe, we would do a selective termination to save the life of the healthy twin.
So Sarah says they were suddenly faced with this choice.
I actually talked to two priests on the phone about it.
Really? Yeah. Her family's Catholic. She was raised Catholic.
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Chapter 5: What was the family's experience after Thomas's passing?
That's very weird.
All right. So they get to the day of March.
23rd.
23rd. Okay. 2010.
10.30 a.m.
Thomas came out first, and he's the sick one that had anencephaly. And then a minute later, Callum came out. And I wasn't sure if Thomas was going to be born alive. I sort of expected him to die within a few minutes.
He was struggling at first when he came out. They didn't think he was going to last too long, but then he kind of rallied, and he was doing pretty good.
Oddly, it was then Callum, the healthy twin, who started to have some trouble at the beginning. And so he and Sarah went off to the infant ICU. And so Ross says, in the delivery room.
It was just me and Thomas for quite a while, actually. We were just sitting together.
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Chapter 6: How did Sarah Gray's quest for answers unfold over the years?
And at the time, I remember thinking, you know, like, come on, little guy, like, just eat some more. Like, if you eat some more, then you'll be stronger. I was like, just eat, just eat.
Well, so how long did Thomas live in the end? Six days. Six days.
He died in Ross's arms and he was surrounded by all of the people that loved him. And then right then we called the Washington Regional Transplant Community. They sent a van over to our house and they picked up his body and took him to DC Children's National Medical Center.
Okay, so this is where the story really gets going, I guess. So how did that idea of donating his organs come into your head?
Did you see an article in the paper, a newspaper article or something?
Yeah, my mom saw an article about a baby who had anencephaly who donated liver cells. And most major religions support organ donation.
Oh, okay. So the van came, picked up Thomas. What happened next?
Nothing happened. Nothing happened. For a long time, you know, I think we got a letter in the mail, I guess.
Sort of a form letter. It basically said, thank you for your generous donation. Thomas's corneas have been sent to this place in Boston where they study a potential cure for blindness. And his livers have been sent to this place in Durham, North Carolina, where they study ways to treat liver disease.
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Chapter 7: What discoveries did Sarah make about the recipients of Thomas's donations?
That must have been a weird phone call.
Yes. I mean, yes.
Yeah, that was like a waker effort.
That's Elizabeth Mason again.
It was just very unusual.
I think she was surprised.
I didn't know what to do with it. Had you ever gotten a call like that before? Never have gotten a call. And she's been working there for 25 years.
She said, hold on, let me connect you to the right person. Don't hang up.
A lot of times when I say something, they hang up on me. So I said, please hold the line while I started searching for someone to speak with her.
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Chapter 8: How did Sarah's perspective on loss and science evolve through her journey?
So after visit two, they got in the car, drove down the street to this place called Cydonet, which is where Thomas's liver ended up.
Basically, CytoNet will take a solid liver and they liquefy it, and then they inject the liquid liver into a baby that's waiting on a liver transplant as a bridge therapy.
Liquid liver.
Liver in a tube.
Yeah. They went in, again, got a tour.
Refrigerators, Petri dishes.
The whole thing. The researchers then tell her that they had a little issue with Thomas's liver.
His liver was bruised when they got it, so they couldn't inject it into a baby.
But then they told her that they were able to use it in an experiment.
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