‘Donate life’ month celebrated at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center

Richard Aidem was at his daughter’s softball tournament in 2006 in Kentucky when he was rushed to the hospital after struggling to breathe.

He was soon diagnosed with congestive heart failure, a serious condition when the heart fails to pump blood as efficiently as it should.

Then in 2012, Aidem called in sick to work and never went back, staying at home with a pump called a left-ventricular assist device inside his body and cords sticking out of his chest. By 2013, it became clear that he would need a heart transplant.

More than 10 years later, Aidem has a different life — thanks to receiving a donor’s heart.

“Every time I see my grandson, it’s a reminder that I could have missed the whole thing,” said the resident of Valencia.

Aidem was one of several speakers at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center who gathered on Wednesday, April 3, to honor the organ donors whose lives could not be saved, as well as their families. They were joined by OneLegacy Foundation, which supports the nation’s largest organ, eye, and tissue recovery organization and works with about 215 hospitals in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties.

Aidem, whose wife Patricia Aidem is director of public relations at Providence Southern California, shared his story with the Orange County Register in 2015 and told it again on Wednesday as he spoke to the audience about the importance of becoming an organ donor.

Across the nation, 42,887 organ transplants were performed in 2022, a 4% increase compared to the previous year, according to data from the United Network for Organ Sharing, which serves as the national Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. More than 25,000 kidney transplants were performed in the U.S., an increase of 3% from 2021.

Last year, three patients at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center whose lives couldn’t be saved donated their organs to nine patients. Those three donors, in addition to two other donors, also provided life-saving tissue — including skin, bone and heart valves — for about 375 people.

During the gathering on Wednesday, hospital staff raised the OneLegacy Donate Life flag which will stay up for the entire month of April, which is also known as National Donate Life month to draw attention to the importance of registering as a donor.

“It’s fascinating how many donor families come back and tell us how grateful they are that they or their loved one had chosen to (donate organs or tissue),” said Tom Mone, chief external affairs officer and vice president of OneLegacy Foundation, which supports the nation’s largest organ, eye, and tissue recovery organization. “That’s the great joy of this work.”

As Aidem was waiting for a heart transplant in 2014, the family of Aaron Friehling was dealing with another heartbreaking story. Friehling was 20 years old when he committed suicide. As he was dying at the hospital, his heart continued beating for several days on life support.

When it became clear that he wouldn’t survive, Friehling’s family decided to donate his heart.

Since becoming a heart recipient in 2014, Aidem has walked his daughter down the aisle at her wedding and volunteered at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, assisting other transplant recipients.

Aidem still recalls with tears his first meeting with Friehling’s mother, who walked up to him and put her ear to his chest as if to listen to her son’s heartbeat.

“He seemed like a really good kid,” Aidem said.