NBC Nightly News: Triple Organ Transplant Recipient Meets With Donor’s Family
NBC Nightly News With Tom Llamas recently interviewed Nicholas Nissen, MD, director of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery at Cedars-Sinai, and Valance Sams Sr., who received a new heart, liver and kidney during a 20-hour surgery performed by an expert team that included Nissen. Sams recently met the mother of the organ donor.
The segment captured the moment Sams, who lives in Los Angeles, first met the mother, April Johnson Heath, in the airport near her Alabama home—fulfilling their longtime wishes.
“It’s good to see you,” they said to each other, embracing.
Sams’ triple organ transplant in 2023 had offered him his only chance at survival after an inflammatory disease caused his organs to fail.
Nissen told NBC Nightly News that successful triple organ transplants are rare.
“Across this huge nation—you know, 300 million people—this is an event that happens two or three times per year,” he said, which made Sams’ case “very much a miracle.”
Sams’ meeting with his donor’s family was two years in the making.
“The day I woke up from the surgery, it was like I had this aching yearn,” he told NBC Nightly News.
Johnson Heath felt the same. She had mailed letters to the three people who received her son, Alec’s, organs, hoping for a response.
“I was just like, ‘I just want to hear back from one of the recipients,’” she said, and she remembered thinking, “It would be really extra special if it’d be the one with his heart.”
Her hopes were fulfilled when Sams contacted her last summer. The two first spoke on what would have been Alec’s 23rd birthday. When they met in person on the second anniversary of Sams’ transplant surgery, Johnson Heath was eager to hear Alec’s heart beating in Sams’ chest.
“He just had a big heart,” she said of Alec, and then, nodding toward Sams, added, “Now he’s got a big heart.”
Sams told NBC Nightly News he intends to continue Alec’s legacy of generosity.
“All I can do is pay it forward,” he said. “I have a lot to live for and a lot to live up to.”
Cedars-Sinai is among the top 10 transplant centers in the U.S. by volume, according to data from the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, and is known for accepting complex, high-risk cases.
Click here to watch the entire segment from NBC Nightly News.