TERRY TEACHOUT: About Last Night. “For those of you who’ve been wondering, Mrs. T is in the intensive-care unit of a New Jersey hospital, and I’m at her side.”

Such misadventures, I regret to say, are part of everyday life for those who require organ transplants in a city that has, as the New York Times recently explained in an important and disheartening feature story, “the lowest rate of organ donor registration in the country.” You wait your turn as patiently as you possibly can, and the longer you wait, the more likely it is that something will go wrong. That’s what happened to us.

To be perfectly frank, I nearly lost Mrs. T last week. But she hung on, that being her way, and as of today she appears to be recovering, slowly but surely. I don’t know when she’ll be getting out of the hospital, but once she does, our lives will return to what we’ve learned in the past few years to think of as “normal.” In fact, we’ll be heading back to Cape May as soon as her health permits. That’s what you do when you suffer from a chronic illness. You wait, hope—and live.

Meanwhile, what I said in this space last November is as true now as it was then: “If you haven’t signed up to be an organ donor, please do so now, and encourage your friends to do likewise. The life you save could be that of the woman I love.”

My father died far too young, waiting for an organ transplant that never came. Unless you have a health condition preventing you from donating your organs, please do consider signing up.