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By The New York Times
CHESHIRE, Mass., Dec. 7 - At 6:30 p.m. Monday,
Quinn Connally was living his Passion, suited up and skating
in a practice drill as part of an elite youth hockey team.
Thirty hours later, his heart was in a Lear jet headed for
Kentucky.
Quinn, who would have turned 13 next Tuesday, died after a
puck struck him in the back of the neck under his helmet.
It caused a blood vessel at the end of his brain stem to burst,
cutting the blood supply to his brain.
He was pronounced dead at 11:59 the next morning, but his
family was told he was brain dead three hours earlier.
"I knew as soon as I saw him on the ice," said his
father, Stephen Connally, who was at the rink at the Springfield
Civic Center when the accident occurred. His worst fears were
confirmed later that evening when a CAT scan at Bay State
Medical Center in Springfield showed massive hemorrhaging
in the head.
Prof. Frederick O. Mueller of the National Center for Catastrophic
Sport Injury Research at the University of North Carolina
said he had never heard of a death involving a player struck
in the back of the neck with a puck. Since he started keeping
records 17 years ago, Professor Mueller said, only two high
school hockey players have died of injuries not related to
a pre-existing condition, though that number does not include
non-school leagues.
When the time came to remove Quinn from life support, Mr.
Connally and his wife, Ann, both in their early 40's, faced
a wrenching decision: Should they just pull the plug or let
doctors continue to ventilate their son's body while recipients
for his vital organs were identified?
But for them, the way forward was clear, they said in an interview
today in their home in this village in the Berkshires. Donating
his organs "was the right thing to do," Ms. Connally
said.
As doctors and hospital personnel started conducting tests
on Quinn's body and going down lists of potential recipients
compatible with Quinn's relatively rare B negative blood,
his father took an active interest in the process. "I
wanted to know who he was helping," Mr. Connally said.
The first potential recipient was a girl, but doctors determined
that Quinn's heart was too large for her.
A 30-year-old man in Kentucky was the identified, and a Lear
jet caring the Kentucky man's surgeons set off to retrieve
the heart for a transplant.
Martha Otterbeck, a clinical social worker at the hospital
who counseled the Connallys, said the time between a declaration
of death and the removal of organs in the operating room is
"very, very difficult for families."
Mr. Connally said, "Your vigil doesn't end until they
take the child into the O.R."
Dr. George Lipowitz, the director of transplantation at Bay
State Medical Center and medical director of the Hartford-based
Northeast Organ Procurement Organization, said that about
60% of the families in the Connally's position decided to
donate a relatives organs. Dr. Lipkowitz's organization handles
about 50 transplants a year, and about 230 are done in New
England, he said.
Sitting in their living room next to a display of their son's
hockey and baseball trophies and a collection of his hockey
shirts, the Connallys and their 11-year-old daughter, Tessa,
spoke tearfully about Quinn. He would not be deterred by Dyslexia
in school, they said, pointing at that as a sign of his determination
off the playing field.
"he was awkward," Ms. Connally said of Quinn, who
was 5-foot-11 and 130 pounds, with size 12 feet. "He
hadn't quite grown into his body, but it was clicking. It
was coming."
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