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Patients who have received transplanted organs, particularly hearts, may experience memories, behaviours, preferences and habits associated with the donor.
Case 1 The donor was an 18-year-old boy killed in an automobile accident. The recipient was an 18-year-old girl diagnosed with endocarditis and subsequent heart failure. The donor's father, a psychiatrist, said: "My son always wrote poetry. We had waited more than a year to clean out his room after he died. We found a book of poems he had never shown us, and we've never told anyone about them. One of them has left us shaken emotionally and spiritually. It spoke of his seeing his own sudden death. He was a musician, too, and we found a song he titled "Danny, My Heart Is Yours"—the words about how my son felt he was destined to die and give his heart to someone. He had decided to donate his organs when he was 12 years old. We thought it was quite strong, but we thought they were talking about it in school. When we met his recipient, we were so...we didn't know, like, what it was. We don't know now. We just don't know."
The recipient reported: "When they showed me pictures of their son, I knew him directly. I would have picked him out anywhere. He's in me. I know he is in me and he is in love with me. He was always my lover, maybe in another time somewhere. How could he know years before he died that he would die and give his heart to me? How would he know my name is Danny? And then, when they played me some of his music, I could finish the phrases of his songs. I could never play before, but after my transplant I began to love music. I felt it in my heart. My heart had to play it. I told my mom I wanted to take guitar lessons—the same instrument Paul [the donor] had played. His song is in me. I feel it a lot at night and it's like Paul is serenading me."
The recipient's father reported: "My daughter, she was what you say....a hell-raiser. Until she got sick—they say from a dentist, they think—she was the wild one. Then she became quite quiet. I think it was her illness, but she said she felt more energy, not less. She said she wanted to play an instrument and she wanted to sing. When she wrote her first song, she sang about her new heart as her lover's heart. She said her lover had come to save her life."
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