Organ donations on the rise

August 17, 2008

Organ donations on the rise
Some still reluctant to sign up

By Robert Mentzer
Wausau Daily Herald
rmentzer@wdhprint.com

Janet Lawrence of the North Central Wisconsin Donate Life Foundation has seen a change over time in people's attitudes toward donating organs.

"When I first donated my kidney, people said, 'Wow, you're like a hero,'" said Lawrence, 54, who gave one of her kidneys to her mother in 2002. "Now it's like everybody I know has donated an organ."

That may be a bit of an overstatement, but Lawrence said the serious point is that people are increasingly touched by organ donations, whether because they are donors or recipients themselves or because a friend or family member is on a waiting list.

And correspondingly, the number of people in Wisconsin who are choosing to become potential donors is rising. In the past six months, 45,000 Wisconsin residents have signed up to be organ donors, according to an announcement by Gov. Jim Doyle in early August.

Part of the change in attitude may be due to advances in medical technology that make organ and tissue donation seem less extraordinary. Lawrence said she remembered seeing reports on television of early heart transplants in the 1960s, when it would be reported each day how many days the recipient had lived. Last year, 225 organ donors in Wisconsin alone participated in nearly 600 transplants, according to the governor's office.

Still, 75,000 desperately ill people in the United States await organ donors -- about 1,600 of them in Wisconsin.

And while donations are growing more commonplace, for some people, a sense of unease about becoming a donor remains.

"Some people might not feel comfortable or they feel a little queasy about it (being donors)," said Ted Gerbig, 59, of Schofield, who received a lung transplant in 2003. "And it's your decision. I can't tell you what to do. But I just say, look at me and all the time I spend now with my family and my grandkids."

Statewide, 51.7 percent of Wisconsin residents identify themselves as potential donors on their driver's licenses. Marathon County narrowly tops the statewide average, with 52.2 percent saying yes to donation. The highest concentration of donors is in St. Croix county, where 61.2 percent have said yes; the lowest is in Menominee county, where only 30.2 have agreed.

Martha Mallon, director of the state's Organ & Tissue Donation Program at the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, said Wisconsin is in the top 10 states for potential organ donation rates. Most of her efforts to increase the number of potential donors consists of education efforts, she said, and she has seen a steady increase in percentages during the four years she's been in the position.

Last week, the state received a federal grant to establish a donor registry which would allow hospitals to directly access a database of people who have agreed to be organ donors, Mallon said. Implementing that project will take about one year, but it will dramatically reduce uncertainty about the wishes of the potential donor.

"The registry was really a missing piece for us," Mallon said. "Nearly every other state has a donor registry."

Kris Herman, 58, of Tomahawk said she was absolutely clear about her husband Tim's wishes to become an organ donor. When she had to have him taken off of life support in 2007, she made his expectations known to the hospital.

"They used his bone, skin, connective tissue and heart valves" for multiple transplants, Herman said. She recently received a letter from a woman who received a tendon from her husband following a skiing accident in Colorado.

"She said when she's able to play tennis again and ski again, she's going to dedicate her first match and her first run to Tim," Herman said. "We were so touched by that, and it was so exciting to us."

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