A Northeast Ohio family turns their grief into helping others through organ/tissue donation

NORTH ROYALTON, Ohio — Jamie Misick went through about nine miscarriages before her daughter, Hazel Joy, was born on Jan. 3, 2022.

She and her husband, Sean, already had a 3-year-old son. Obviously, after such a harrowing experience, this little girl was a welcome addition.

On a warm July day in 2022, the family arose to begin a routine day that included work and dropping Hazel off at the sitter’s.

At 6 months old, Hazel was sassy, spunky and full of energy.

Then she was gone.

“I was on maternity leave with her for the first three months of her life, and after maternity leave, obviously, I had to go back to work,” Jamie Misick said.

“I found an in-home daycare for her to go to.

“Later that day, I got a call from the daycare telling me she had stopped breathing in her crib. It was determined she died of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome).”

Hearing a doctor tell you that your baby couldn’t be saved is gut-wrenching. That’s especially true when you are looking at her and she seems perfect, Misick said.

The family began to think of ways to keep her memory alive and, in turn, help someone else.

The choice was organ/tissue donation.

They spoke to a nurse at University Hospitals of Cleveland, who contacted Lifebanc, which has a representative at the hospital.

“While we were in the hospital, we had discussions with Lifebanc,” Misick said.

“The staff was amazing and made the experience less traumatic.

“The nurse we were working with took us through the whole process on how it would go. She was so sweet, and acted kind of like a little therapist for me while we were going through the process.

“When you’re going through the donation process, they must run a lot of tests on the donor and make sure everything’s good,” Misick said.

“Numerous amounts of blood must be tested, which makes it a long process.

“When it came to the actual donation surgery, they were in there with us. They talked to us about how we should talk to our sons about what has happened.

“The staff took her handprints and her footprints and made different clay keepsakes for us. It was a very traumatic time, but their gestures helped.

“They were able to take her tissue.”

Katie Payne, CEO at Lifebanc, says the organization works with 80 hospitals — including the Cleveland Clinic, MetroHealth and University Hospitals — in 20 counties around Northeast Ohio.

Lifebanc provides education. Whenever a hospital calls with a referral about the opportunity for donation, Lifebanc is charged with speaking with families about the opportunity to provide that legacy to their loved one.

“We facilitate about 200 organ donors a year,” Payne said. “If you average the past five years, that equals approximately 650 organs transplanted.”

Lifebanc has been around since 1986 and is the only non-profit organ and tissue recovery organization in Northeast Ohio.

“Our staff will explain any sort of information that any donor or the family of a donor feels they need to understand,” Payne said.

“We want anyone who might be leaning toward the donation process to understand what will happen next.

“Over this year, we’re close to over 400 donations for tissue, which is separate from the organ donations.”

According to the Health Resources and Services Administration website, there are approximately 103,223 men, women and children on the national transplant waiting list: https://www.organdonor.gov/learn/organ-donation-statistics.

Minority populations historically have dodged anything relating to organ donations. For some African Americans, it’s due to the 40-year Tuskegee syphilis experiment.

On the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health website, in 2024, non-Hispanic Black/African Americans comprised 12.6 percent of organ donors.

Of the organs recovered from non-Hispanic Black/African Americans, 17 percent came from living donors, compared to 30 percent of the organs recovered from non-Hispanic whites: https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/organ-transplants-and-blackafrican-americans

“I moved here from Georgia in January of this year,” Payne said. “When you think about the South and about health care, you think about experiments.

“That is institutional mistrust in the healthcare system. You know that it’s a true story, and it created fear.

“I totally understand that and recognize the fact that it’s been passed around generationally.

“I have friends who grew up in a house where their grandma would tell them to never donate. And it’s a real thing for many families and in many cultures.

“So I do my best in the most respectful way to gain the trust of the community.”

Not long after Hazel Joy’s death, the Misick family decided to create the Hazel Joy Memorial Foundation.

“When she passed away, we were so confused about what to do next,” Misick said.

“It was so traumatic and so unexpected that you don’t really know what to do. What we thought would keep her name and memory alive was to create our foundation.

“We have met so many other families who have had the same experience, and we’ve helped families through the beginning process of grieving and figuring out what they’re supposed to do moving forward.

“It’s really affected our whole family. I have a 17-year-old stepson, a 7-year-old son and we now have a 1-year-old boy, born after Hazel Joy’s passing.”

Recently, the family realized the gift of having such a foundation. One of their son’s schoolmates recently died; through the foundation, they were able to help the family with funeral expenses, she said.