A Baltimore man who several times rejected his wife's offer of one of her kidneys received the transplant after she collapsed and died at a hospital.
The Baltimore Sun reported that Rafi Sharif turned his wife down because he was afraid something would go wrong, leaving their daughter, Anya, with two disabled parents or worse. He had already gone through two liver transplants after being diagnosed with hepatitis C.
Sharif was scheduled to receive a transplant from an unrelated methadone addict. He and his wife, Marian, were waiting for test results at the University of Maryland Medical Center when she suffered a massive brain hemorrhage as she woke from a short nap on her husband's lap.
No one knew the 50-year-old woman was at risk, although she had recently suffered from slight hypertension and had had a headache for two days.
Marian Sharif had designated herself an organ donor and her blood type matched her husband's. He signed papers authorizing the transplant.
"I guess this way I will at least have a living part of her inside of me," Sharif told the transplant surgeon, Dr. Luis Campos.
© Copyright 2005 by United Press International
