Decision to donate can change people’s lives

Decision to donate can change people’s lives

Published Online Mar 07, 2008 - 02:45 PM

By Jacki Wood
This is the second in a two-part series on organ donation.

Every 13 minutes, another name is added to the national waiting list.
An average of 17 people die every day because of a lack of available organs for transplant.
In Missouri alone, there are nearly 2,000 people awaiting a life-saving transplant.
While the statistics are staggering, the emotions involved in donating a loved one’s organs make the decision much harder.
“I would like to say that the decision to donate life is an easy one, but there are so many emotions involved,” Brenda Neff said, who lost her three-year-old daughter Abrielle in a car accident in 2007. “For us, there was never a question as to whether or not we would donate, it was more a matter of coming to grips with our loss.”
But through their decision, many people’s lives changed.
“We were able to give a woman in her 30s on dialysis, with not much time left, two kidneys,” Neff said. “We received a letter that she is doing well.
“We have been touched by the story about the little three-year-old boy with Biliary Atresia that received Abby’s liver. His liver would not allow him to gain weight through normal eating and had to be on a feeding tube at night. He had been on the transplant list since 2005 at just eight months of age. He was not able to crawl until he was a year old or walk until he was 17 months because he wasn’t strong enough. Since his transplant, ‘his energy level and quality of life is 200 percent better,’ according to his mother. He is able to do everything a three-year-old should do.”
Neff continued: “The stories are bittersweet because of the loss of our Abrielle, but somehow knowing that her energy has brought strength and new life to others is a form of comfort.”
She said the donor family always has rights to know how the recipient is doing through the transplant network, even if the family has not contacted them.
Through the Abrielle Neff Foundation, she said she hopes to be able to begin Abby’s Gift soon, a program about organ donation.
Make the decision now
The decision to donate should be made now before any emotions are involved. Tell family, friends, religious leader and physician of your decision, sign the back of your driver’s license with a permanent marker and join the organ donor registry.
In Missouri, this is a statewide, voluntary, confidential registry of potential organ and tissue donors that was established by legislation in 1996. Upon death, only authorized hospital personnel can access the registry. Your desires are then shared with your family to make the final decision.
Teri Harr, health education coordinator at St. Francis Hospital and Health Services in Maryville, said she recently got a new driver’s license, which she signed, designating her willingness to be an organ donor. She had her two children witness for her and told them her wishes in regards to donation.
“Not only should you sign your driver’s license and organ donation card, it’s also important to make your wishes known to your family members,” Harr said. “It will make the decision for them much easier.”
Guidelines for donation
Everyone should consider themselves potential organ and tissue donors. There are a few exceptions, including HIV positive, active cancer and systemic infection, but there are no age limitations, as both newborns and senior citizens have been donors.
And don’t automatically rule yourself out if you have a medical condition. Doctors will evaluate the condition of your organs when the time arises, and the decision will be based on a combination of factors, like the type of illness you have had, your physical condition at the time of your death and the types of organs and tissues that would be donated.
What can be donated?
Kidneys, heart, lungs, liver, pancreas and the intestines can all be donated.
Also, corneas, the middle ear, skin, heart valves, bone, veins, cartilage, tendons and ligaments can be stored in tissue banks and used to restore sight, cover burns, repair hearts, replace veins and mend damaged connective tissue and cartilage.
While most donations happen after the donor has died, some organs and tissues can be donated while the donor is alive.
A living donor can give one of their kidneys, because the remaining one still provides the necessary functions for the body.
They can also donate one of two lobes of their liver. Cells in the liver regenerate until it is almost its original size.
It’s also possible to donate a lung or part of a lung, part of the pancreas or part of the intestines. They don’t regenerate, but will still fully function after donation.
Quite surprisingly, it’s also possible to donate a heart, when someone with severe lung disease and a normally functioning heart would have a greater chance of survival if he or she received a combined heart and lung transplant. As a result, the heart-lung recipient’s own heart is then donated to an individual who needs only a heart transplant.
Blood stem cells can be donated by healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 60. These can come from marrow, peripheral blood stem cells and cord blood stem cells.
Blood can be donated every 56 days and platelets can be donated without donating blood twice in one week up to 24 times a year.
For more information on organ donation, visit www.dhss.mo.gov/OrganDonor. You can enroll in the registry on the website or by calling 1-888-497-4564.

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