Life-changing present: Donating blood, organ best gifts you could give this holidayBy Erica Molina Johnson / El Paso Times
Posted: 12/21/2009 12:00:00 AM MST
EL PASO -- Organ and blood donations are two gifts that can save lives, but they're gifts many don't think about during the holiday season.
Lower Valley resident Manuel Corral wants the community to know how much organ donation can affect a person's life. It completely changed his.
Corral, 41, received a kidney transplant Nov. 16 after spending six years on dialysis due to organ failure caused by hypertension and diabetes.
"I feel human again. I kind of felt like I was half-alive and half-dead while I was on dialysis," Corral said. "We're celebrating Hanukkah now, and it's the best Hanukkah ever."
His kidney was donated by a deceased 40-year-old North Texas woman.
"I feel very blessed. To the person who donated the kidney, there's no way I can thank them. I don't know how to do it," he said.
But he's trying. He's searching for the words to thank his donor's family in a letter, and he wants to live in a way to honor the woman he's now tied to forever.
"I want to do something good in my life so they know something good came out of their loss," Corral said.
Pam Silvestri, spokeswoman for the Southwest Transplant Alliance in Dallas, said between 100 and 150 El Pasoans are waiting for organs at any given time. About 80 percent need kidneys.
She said the number of people waiting for organs nationally was about 30,000 in 1995, but has since ballooned to about 105,000. About 80 percent need kidneys.
Silvestri said registering as an organ donor is a gift that can be given both to a stranger in need and to those the donor loves most.
"If you're looking for something to do for the holidays for your family, if you take the time to register as an organ donor, it takes the pressure off them to make that decision during at an already difficult time when they're losing a loved one," she said.
People can register online to become organ donors.
Another lifesaving gift that health-care professionals hope the community keeps in mind this season is blood donation.
Though the holiday season fills many people with generosity, it's also the time when the area's blood supply can dip to potentially dangerous levels.
Donors become busy with holiday concerns or they get sick, and businesses and schools that would normally host blood drives close or trim operating hours during this time of year, said LuAnn Wieland, spokes woman for United Blood Services in El Paso.
"It's just a harder time for us to get (donations) through the blood drives," she said.
The agency, which provides blood for West Texas and Southern New Mexico, needs to collect about 150 units of blood every day to keep the region's 18 hospitals supplied with blood. The region needs about 42,000 units of blood a year.
Wieland said that although the supply is now stable, on some days during the holiday season only 20 to 50 units of blood are collected.
It is crucial to keep the supply up during this time of year, she said, especially because elective surgeries often surge at the end and beginning of the year, and because the season can bring a spike in car crashes or other accidents that require blood transfusions.
"People think (blood) is just for accidents, and of course it's used for accidents, but it's used for cancer patients on an everyday basis. It's used for transfusions," Wieland said.
"People do need blood, and the blood supply has to be there."
Erica Molina Johnson may be reached at emolina@elpasotimes.com; 546-6132.
Donate
# To register as an organ donor, visit
www.donatelifetexas.org or
www.donevidatexas.org.
# To donate blood, visit United Blood Services at 424 S. Mesa Hills, 544-5422; 1338 N. Zaragoza, 849-7390; 4758 Loma Del Sur, Suite B, 822-8438; or 1200 Commerce in Las Cruces, 575-527-1322.
http://www.elpasotimes.com/health/ci_14038389
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