For Nicole Pannucci, there was no turning back once she found out she was an organ donor match for her ailing father.
Frank Pannucci’s first reaction was “absolutely not,” his daughter said, after she told him she wanted to donate a kidney.
“You are not doing it,” he told her. “I’m on the transplant list.”
“Who listens to their father?” Nicole said earlier this week “I put the papers in without him knowing it. I told my father, ‘I understand why you don’t want to do it, but if you don’t do it, I’m going to give it to a stranger.’
“He said, ‘All right, if you want to go through with it.’ ”
Nicole could have backed out anytime right up until the Dec. 22 operation at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital. But she didn’t.
“My dad was my hero,” she said.
“Nicole, being the stubborn hero she is, she says, ‘This is it. I’m a match,’ ” her brother Frank Pannucci Jr. said. “And that was it.”
Nicole, a special education science teacher at Brick Memorial High School, admits she got nervous the night before the surgery.
“I didn’t sleep that night at all,” she said. “I never had surgery before. I was nervous, and the tears started coming.”
Nicole and her father had back-to-back rooms at the hospital. Nicole was taken into surgery around 7:30 a.m. Dec. 22. By 4:30 p.m., the transplant was complete. And the Pannucci family thought all was well.
Nicole’s transplanted kidney began working immediately and started producing urine. She was groggy from painkillers, but wanted to see her father that night, so she was taken into his room. They lay on their beds and looked at each other.
“He said, ‘Thank you,’ ” Nicole said. “I gave him a thumbs up. We said, ‘I love you.’ ”
And the 69-year-old Pannucci began to make what appeared to be a spectacular recovery.
“The surgery was gold, absolute gold,” Pannucci Jr. said. “He’s moving, he’s talking. He doesn’t have to be isolated.”
“Wednesday he was cracking jokes,” Nicole said. “He had gotten up at one point. He was producing urine. Everybody told me he was in great spirits.”
Pannucci was doing so well his doctors told him he could have visitors on Christmas Eve.
“He was happy and he was ready to get something to eat,” his son said. “But at 4:30 a.m. he became short of breath. His heart didn’t give them an opportunity to do anything. It wasn’t quite the way it was supposed to turn out.”
Frank Pannucci died in the early morning hours of Christmas Eve. Nicole could tell from her adjoining room that he was in pain.
Their father had longstanding heart problems, including a “handful” of heart attacks, small strokes and high blood pressure. His kidneys failed after a previous heart attack, and Pannucci had been on dialysis for some time, his son said.
“He was doing well with the dialysis,” Pannucci Jr. said. “It was dialysis on top of the heart condition. If you didn’t do it [the transplant], it was only a matter of time. He didn’t want to be on dialysis. Dialysis takes a lot out of you.”
Nicole is not sorry she went through with the surgery. She would do it all over again.
“No,” she said adamantly. “Not at all. His heart gave out. He was dialysis-free for two days.”
Nicole and Frank want to stress that their father’s death had nothing to do with the transplant surgery.
“I don’t want people to be afraid of this,” Nicole said. “The operation was a success. My father would want me to talk to you.”
“We don’t want people to think the surgery had anything to do with it,” Frank Jr. said. “The surgery was textbook. We don’t want people to think organ donation is a bad thing.”
The family moved Christmas up a week to prepare for the surgery.
“Daddy and I had Christmas a week before we went into the hospital,” she said.
Nicole planned to be at her father’s wake on Dec. 29 and 30 at the Colonial Funeral Home on Route 88 and at his funeral Mass at noon at Epiphany Catholic Church on Dec. 31.
“I’ll be there on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday, moving very slowly,” she said.
Pannucci Sr., who lived in Orange for many years, moved his family to Brick Township in 1981. He was elected to six terms on the Board of Education. His 18-year stint ended several years ago, when he lost his bid for a seventh term. He also served as a commissioner on the Ocean County Utilities Authority for 15 years.
“Dad genuinely did love politics,” Frank said. “He loved public service. He’s one of a kind. He was one in a million. He never held anything against anybody. He had a hell of a life.”
Frank Pannucci Sr. loved his family, politics, shooting, history, good Italian food and the Boy Scouts of America. He was a lifelong Boy Scout and had earned the rank of Eagle Scout when he was a youth. He was a past district chairman of the Running Water District of the Boy Scouts of America for the Jersey Shore.
Pannucci earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Seton Hall University. He taught at Orange High School for 37 years. He was a charter member of the Brick chapter of UNICO, an Italian-American service organization; a member of the Brick Republican Club; past director of the Central Jersey Rifle and Pistol Range
in Jackson; a member of the PTA and PTO at various Brick schools, and a board member for the Brick Memorial Football Parents’ Club.
He leaves his wife, Donna; a son, Frank; a daughter, Nicole; two sisters, Jean Pannucci-Ripa and Donna Pannucci- Marano; a niece, Andrea Marano; a nephew, Anthony Marano; and an aunt, Margaret Andriola- Nicosia, all of Brick; and numerous aunts, uncles and cousins.
The family asks that donations be made to the National Kidney Foundation, 30 E. 33rd St., New York, NY 10016.