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PrintSpecial Report: Last Wish
It was a love story that began in junior high...
"I was in seventh grade and he was in ninth grade."Mandy Garvin, Wife
But a week ago, a fluke motorcycle accident ended dreams that were just beginning. Josh Garvin is brain dead and on life support.
"We were that perfect couple. I had everything with him."Mandy Garvin
In the emergency room, before his coma, he asked his wife for a special favor.
"He just said you need to do what you need to do, babe. Make this possible because I don't know what's going to happen to me."Mandy Garvin
They'd been trying to have a baby for more than a year.
"He was a wonderful human being and I just wanted him to be a daddy. That's all I wanted from him."Mandy Garvin
Even at the end, that's all he wanted too. Josh asked Mandy to harvest his sperm and start a new life without him, a request that's been unprecedented. Turns out that the law does not allow for sperm harvest from a person whom cannot give consent.
"I can sign the paper to say, ‘yes, my husband is an organ donor, take his organs and give them to somebody who needs them.’ I'm in need too."Mandy Garvin
But on this day comes word from the hospital that leads to tears of a different kind...
"We just got some news that there might be two doctors that will do it for me."Mandy Garvin
…Doctors who found a way to consider the sperm retrieval an extension of organ donation.
"It's really important that I get this done because my husband was my world."Mandy Garvin