2019 Emma Rothman

Name:                                     Emma Rothman

Type of Donation:             Organ recipient

Age and Location:             Age 19 – Cranford, NJ

Transplant Date:                 4/1/2011

Sponsor:                               Honored by Hearts for Emma/NJ Sharing Network

EMMA’S STORY

Emma Rothman has been involved in supporting efforts to increase awareness of and participation in organ and tissue donation since she was twelve years old. In 2013, Emma and her family took their firsthand experience involving lifesaving organ donation and transplantation to establish a 501(c)3 called Hearts for Emma. This Nonprofit Corporation works to “provide assistance to families of children with heart disease and supports educational initiatives relating to heart transplantation and organ and tissue donation” (www.heartsforemma.org).

Emma and the Board of Trustees call their volunteer work “bedside giving” because of the individualized and personal support it provides each patient and their family. #ItsYourRoom, a project that helps patients decorate their uniform hospital room based on their own interests, shows just how specialized Hearts for Emma’s bedside giving is. Two of the many other projects Hearts for Emma prides themselves with are meal cards and Emma’s Closet. Meal cards are gift cards from local restaurants near Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital that are distributed to families who need the support.

Emma’s Closet provides donated toiletries and other personal care hygiene items to families that would like to use more comfortable and body friendly items rather than the customary products distributed by the hospital.

Aside from bedside giving, Hearts for Emma also focuses on educational opportunities to spread awareness about organ, tissue, and cornea transplantation. In high school, Emma worked with the New Jersey Sharing Network (NJSN), her state’s organ procurement organization, to design educational materials showcasing organ donation in a relatable way that also complied with the Hero Act.

Emma felt it was important to create a new and positive frontier around the stigmas and myths that surround organ and tissue donation and transplantation. From these goals, the video “You Have the Power to Save Lives” was born. Emma created, directed, and starred in this new video that has helped not only begin the conversation of organ donation but shift it from a taboo topic to a more approachable one for high schoolers.

Shortly after, Emma, with the help of Hearts for Emma, designed the brochure, “You have the POWER to Save Lives,” outlining what it means to be connected to the organ, tissue, and cornea transplant community from the unique perspectives of NJSN volunteers, a donor family, a tissue transplant recipient, and Emma herself (www.njsharingnetwork.org). The brochure and “I Got The Power” stickers and information cards are used in conjunction with the “You Have the Power to Save Lives” video when NJSN staff and volunteers do outreach presentations on the importance of registering to become an organ and tissue donor. Since the video’s release in 2014, 110,481 students have been impacted from 333 school presentations spanning across the state (The New Jersey Sharing Network).

Emma’s involvement with the organ and tissue donation and transplantation community was not as planned as it may seem when reading of the progression of Hearts for Emma; in fact, it was not planned at all. In 2011, Emma went into cardiac arrest before doctors could diagnose her with hypertrophic ventricular cardiomyopathy and fatal end stage heart failure. When she was disengaged from her induced coma and intubation, Emma was informed that a virus had infected her heart. Specialized pediatric cardiologists explained to her the heart transplant she just received to save her life. At the time, the transplant world was still foreign to Emma and her family, as they were thrown into it with no prior knowledge or family history of cardiomyopathy. But just fifteen days after Emma was admitted to the hospital, she was discharged, taking with her new knowledge about what a heart transplant is and how she could take the best care of hers at home.

Looking at nineteen-year-old Emma Rothman today, you would have no idea that at eleven years old she received her life saving heart transplant. You would immediately notice her Orange pride as a current sophomore at Syracuse University and the many other passions that fuel her extraordinary life. Emma utilizes her journeys in and out of the hospital to spread awareness and educate people on the dependence we have on one another to register to become organ donors.

Her transplant does not hold her back from experiencing life; it motivates her to do more.

Because in the end, we all have the power to save a life.