Claire Sylvia, then 43 years old, had begun having dreams about the donor of her transplanted heart and lungs soon after the surgery. She knew only that she had received the organs of an eighteen-year-old boy who died a few hours earlier. Her dreams revealed to her the name of the donor, his appearance, and some of his behaviors.

These revelations were later confirmed when Claire found the obituary of her donor and met with the donor family.

Claire feels that her dreams helped her integrate the donated organs, and keep her healthy more than six years after the transplant.

Claire's experiences, as well as those of other transplant patients, raise an entirely new question. It is a fact that soon after a transplant operation many of the nerves between the severed organ and the recipient grow back, establishing a neural connection between the donor's organ and the recipient's body. Does information about the donor reside in their organs and become accessible to the recipient? Is there a kind of cellular memory? Are dreams a direct avenue to this awareness?

The answers to these questions may be of great significance as low-cost organ transplants become more routine. People who are taken apart and reassembled with parts of other people who have died will want to know.

--Patricia Garfield

SOURCE: Creative Dreaming by Patricia Garfield, 1995 ed., p.18.
DATE: a footnote labels Sylvia's follow-up as "personal communication, 1994"; so her transplant, "more than six years" ago, was 1987, and the dreams soon after.

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