If you had another shot at life, what would you do?

Dr. Joseph Scalea's patients need good used working parts to live. 

A pre-owned kidney. 

A healthy liver. 

Maybe, God forbid, a viable pancreas. 

Not ideal, but they all await a vital organ from a complete stranger who was not expecting to die today. 

Scalea, the current vice chair of surgery at the Medical University of South Carolina, shared with a couple hundred people at the Daniel Island Speakers Series on April 15 that he has performed thousands of organ transplants all across the country. 

Over that time, he said his surgical mentality became routine.  

Day to day to day. 

One form here. One form there. One patient in. One patient out. 

OK, who's next?[Text Wrapping Break]"Something was gnawing at me. I've performed thousands of transplants, run some of the nation's largest transplant programs, and something was missing from that experience," he said. 

Scalea said the night before another surgery, he had been poring through the administrative forms given to patients detailing the risks of the operation. 

He started to read intentionally.  

"Line by line by line," he recalled, "And what struck me about that form – what was missing – was this person: the patient. I thought about those patients that we visit, holding a mother's hand. We are moving life from one person to another, and the patients are scared." 

Scalea continued, taking a pause between each sentence. 

"I opened up the door to the pre-op suite, and I saw the patient toward the end of the hall. I sat on the edge of her bed. And we went through all the things we are supposed to. The percentages. The risks. Things like bleeding. Infections."  

It was then, for the first time, Scalea said he asked a question he had never asked before. 

"Ma'am, what are we doing here?" 

"We are going to do a transplant," she said. 

"But why?" 

"Because I want to live." 

Scalea looked at her and asked again: 

"But why?" 

He said the woman thought real hard. 

She told him that she had never seen her 12-year-old granddaughter play piano or cheered on her 9-year-old grandson who plays soccer in Tennessee because she was continually on dialysis. 

She was too sick to travel. 

"Ma'am," Scalea responded, "I'd really like to make that happen." 

It was that day Scalea said he decided to change his bedside manner. He began asking every patient why they wanted to live, an answer that, in turn, gave him his own "why." 

Some wanted to see their grandchildren grow. ("It's always the grandkids.") 

Some wanted to teach their child to run the family business.  

Some wanted to travel: "Vegas, baby!" 

"When people are facing death and have an opportunity for life, only four things matter," he said. 

Family. The experience of travel. Purpose through work. "And, God."

Scalea said the "why" question made him rethink his own life. "How do we make decisions? How do we lead? What's the vision for the work I am doing in this world in order to touch others? How can I help more patients?" 

Dr. Joseph Scalea, who is also a painter, a musician, and an inventor of a drone designed to carry live organs faster than a car, left the audience with one more question. 

"What is your reason to live? If you don't have a reason, it's time to find one."