Donate Life: The Documentary

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Donate Life: The Documentary
Elizabeth O'Hara/KFOX News Director

Posted: 1:58 pm MDT March 31, 2009Updated: 4:31 pm MDT April 2, 2009
EL PASO, Texas -- It’s a typical El Paso morning in March. 5:02 a.m. and the winds slash through a Lower Valley neighborhood. German sheperds and yappy yard dogs howl at the two shadows hurrying to the family car. No one wants to be up at this ungodly hour but staying in and sleeping late are not options for Manny Corral.

“Every day I wake up and it's like, 'Man, I hate going to dialysis,' but there's not much I can do.”

The 40-year-old Corral is a diabetic in kidney failure. He’s been on dialysis for five years.

“There are good days and bad days. For the most part, the last five years it's been mostly bad days for me,” he said.

Manny’s wife, Laura, wakes up at the same grueling hour to take her husband of 19 years to Davita Dialysis three times a week. “Sometimes I'm afraid I'm going to fall asleep on the way there. It's repetitive,” she said.

The couple made the 10-minute drive to the center where Manny will have his body temperature checked as well as his blood pressure. But the most important check is his weight. Corral said in just one session, he can lose up to 10 pounds of toxic waste that builds up since his last session just more than 48 hours ago.

He mutters as he looks at the pictures of other Davita patients on the lobby wall. “I just don't want to be here.”

His wife Laura quickly explains: “He's used to moving around, using his hands, working. To sit for four hours, it's asking a lot."

Corral used to work as a technician on lottery machines. He traveled nearly daily to various convenience and grocery stores to make sure the machines worked. Now Corral needs his own luck: a new kidney.

“Unless you are going through this, it's hard to explain what it's like,” Corral said. “It's like a death sentence. That's the way I feel. You're either waiting for a kidney or waiting to die. There's no in-between.”

There are about 1,600 Texans and New Mexicans on the national transplant registry. Specific data for El Paso County and Dona Ana County are not kept because the numbers vary as people move from one side of the country to the other seeking treatment. In Corral’s case, an important phone call came in February 2009. He and another person were both matches for one kidney.

“I laughed, I cried,” Corral said. “They told me, "Go to the airport. Make reservations, which I did. Finally, I called her at 4 in the afternoon. I said, ‘The plane leaves at 6. Do I still need to go?’ She said, ‘No the other person took the kidney so you're still on standby but you're not getting this one.’”

Corral stopped and paused. He tried to hide a literal weak smile. “It's a sad fact that for someone to get a kidney, someone has to die. I feel bad that that's what's got to happen but I don't want to die. Bottom line, I don't want to die. I want to live. I'd love to be an old man. I'd like the chance,” he said.

Pam Silvestri of Southwest Transplant Alliance said that in 2008, 30 people in El Paso donated their organs. But she said that number would double or even triple if more people were educated about organ donation and registered to become potential donors. She said unfortunately, transplant members have to approach grieving family members who have not been informed by the deceased about their final wishes.

“So most of the time we are going in to talk to a family and they haven't thought about it,” Silvestri said.

As a result of a growing population with various health issues and, the lack of registered organ donors, KFOXTV has launched “Donate Life,” a health campaign meant to inform the public about the need for registered organ donors. Once signed up online, a participant will receive an official letter from “Donate Life” that requires a signature as well as the signature of two witnesses. Once it is returned, the participant is an official organ donor.

“So now we don't have to go in and ask your family. We go in and tell your family that you are a consented organ donor and we are going to recover your organs so that lives can be saved,” Silvestri said. “We don't have to ask them to make that decision any more.”

Silvestri said telling versus asking takes the pressure off families that have just lost a loved one. “We should never have to ask a family at the time their loved one has been pronounced dead if they know if that person wanted to be a donor,” said Silvestri.

Yvonne Garcia Earsley’s family was unprepared for the sudden death of her 12-year-old brother, Brandon. She said family members believed organ donation would mean various body parts of Brandon’s, including his toes and genitalia, would be taken.

“My mom and my dad both said no right away because they didn't want my brother cut open. And this poor lady was trying to explain exactly what was going to happen but she couldn't really even speak, every time she opened her mouth, everyone would start arguing,” she said.

“My parents don’t know about organ donation. And their main concerns were also religious,” Garcia Earsley said. “They are Catholic, my family is Catholic. And they were like, ‘No you come here with what God gives you, that's it. You take everything with you.’"

Silvestri said questions about religion and organ donation are not uncommon. “Here's the question I ask when I hear people say that, ‘Do you still have the teeth you were born with? Did you ever get your tonsils out? What about someone who goes to war and they get their leg blown off? Are those situations that make it impossible for you to then to get to the next place?’ So if your answer is, ‘No, of course not, if someone is in war and loses a leg or had their tonsils out or some other organ taken out through surgery or they lost their baby teeth, of course you know it's not your physical body you need, it's your spiritual body,’ and once we talk people through that, they realize that's not really an objection.”

Garcia Earsley said it was a coincidence that in the weeks prior to Brandon’s death, she had been researching organ donation. She said she did so because she had an upcoming birthday and she was thinking of adding “organ donor” to her driver’s license.

“I let my family know that this was my brother's last opportunity to give something back and my brother was a very giving person. That's just the way he was. And if they didn't do this, then the spirit of my brother was just going to be lost forever. This was his last chance to live on and give that chance to someone else who could use it,” she said.

The Garcia family made the decision for Brandon to donate his organs.

“I remember I put my children to bed, my parents went to sleep and as soon as everyone went to sleep, I went back to the hospital and spent that night with my brother by myself,” Garcia Earsley said. “And he was treated respectfully. There were people who flew down from Dallas and they stayed with my brother and they took care of him very well. It was like he was a recovering patient is how they treated him. They didn’t treat him like he was someone they had to keep alive so they could just harvest these organs,” she said.

Brandon’s liver, intestine, kidney and heart were donated to adults and children across the country.

“Brandon never really died after that day,” Garcia Earsley said. “It's like he has more life now because he's not stuck in just one body and living just one life. Now all these kids and these adults, they have that second chance thanks to my brother.”

In Downtown El Paso, far removed from the Montana Vista neighborhood where Brandon Garcia lived and died, Eddie Knipp putters around the Central Furniture Store Company, the store his family has run for decades. He knows all too well about second chances.

“I was having a few little chest pains,” Knipp said. “I thought it was a muscle pull because I was working out with weights.”

It turned out a bout months earlier with bronchitis had turned much more serious. While sitting in the emergency room, Knipp’s wife got the news. Knipp had cardiomyopathy, an enlarged heart brought on by the bronchitis.

“The doc told my wife that he didn't think I would make it through the night. I would be lucky to make it through the night,” he said.

Within days, doctors started making plans for Knipp to go to Houston for a heart transplant. It was 1987. Knipp had never heard of a heart transplant.

“I was so afraid. I told my wife, ‘If I can’t live with my own heart, then I won’t live.’”

Knipp said thoughts of his wife and his two young sons living without him made him change his mind. “I wanted to see each one of them graduate from high school, see each one graduate from college. I wanted to see each one of them get married. And I wanted to see each one of them have children. In that order,” Knipp chuckled.

“It was December 24 of that same year, Christmas Eve. My wife and I are at a friend's house, we're having split pea soup for dinner,” Knipp smiled. “The beeper went off, we couldn't hear the beeper. The transplant team called El Paso, my mother-in-law, but she didn't know where we were but she called our friend Steve in Houston. So he called us and said, ‘Hey the hospital called, they have a gift for you.’ I got the heart of a 17-year-old kid who died in a motorcycle accident in Houston,” said Knipp.

Knipp said the recovery was grueling but well worth it.

“I coached my kids in baseball, watched them grow up to be teenagers,” said Knipp. But his brush with transplantation was not over.

“Then unfortunately in 1995, my wife and I were in Houston. Michael, our 17-year-old at that time, he and I shared the same birthdays,” Knipp sighed. “We got a phone call at the motel. It was her father and her father never called us, telling us that Michael had been in a car accident.”

Knipp paused and absent-mindedly rubbed his forehead.

“For some reason, I don’t know why … Michael always wore his seat belt. Always. And I have no idea why he didn't wear it but he was driving and failed to negotiate a turn and slid off the side of road into a ditch. Flipped several times, threw him from the car. That was on February the 12th. And on February 15 he was pronounced brain dead.”

The year before he died, Michael earned his driver’s license and registered as an organ donor.

“He was proud of it and I think only because of what he saw in me,” Knipp said as he tugged at his crisp blue button down shirt.

“Michael has helped over 60 people throughout the United States … bone marrow, tissue, organs, skin,” Knipp said.

Months later, Knipp’s wife Laurie started keeping a collection of ceramic angels at the family’s furniture store to remember Michael. “Every time I had to go to Houston for medical checkups, she would take a little more space,” Knipp laughed. While the angel collection grew bigger, Knipp’s health grew worse. Knipp admitted he was suffering from a “broken heart” following his son’s death.

“You know I lost an older brother at the young age of 49. Lost my father at a young age but it was nothing like losing my son,” Knipp said.

He needed a second transplant. With so few people signed up as organ donors, Knipp’s chances for a second heart looked slim. Remarkably, just four years after his own son donated his heart, Knipp received a second heart transplant.

“You know we hear about all these heroes: baseball players, basketball players, movie stars. Big deal. A hero is someone who will restore life to others. That is my hero,” said Knipp.

These days, 65 year old Knipp longs to get back to the golf course. But even after enduring two heart transplants and the transplantation of his oldest son’s organs, Knipp’s health run-ins are not over. In recent years he discovered he suffers from a rare blood disorder that has slowly killed off his kidney. Part of his weekly route includes three trips a week to dialysis.

“As far as a kidney transplant, I don’t think … I just don’t think I could do it,” he sighed. “But … BUT,” he said as he wagged his index finger. “But when you get that chance, you never know what you're going to do.” Knipp chuckled and quickly greeted a new customer.

It’s important to know that not everyone who is signed up to be an organ donor can proceed to donate organs. According to the Southwest Transplant Alliance, only those people who die while on a ventilator can potentially donate organs and tissue. That regulation narrows the pool of people even further at a time when few people are already registered. For people like Manny Corral, a living donor may be their next best hope. Corral’s brother-in-law, SSgt. Dennis Allen who works at William Beaumont Army Medical Center, is a kidney match.

“When I came home from mid-tour, my wife asked me to take a test so I did and I'm a match,” Allen said. “I'm only using one anyway,” he joked.

But being a match does not translate into instant transplantation.

“The commander at Beaumont is the only one who has to sign off on it,” Corral said. “Every day I'll ask him, ‘Have you heard anything? Have you heard anything?’ Knowing it's there, one signature away. Go to Dallas, get it done. It drives me crazy. It's like, wow, come on man!”

If SSgt. Allen gets the okay to help Corral, the two may not have to go to Dallas for the hours-long operation. This spring, Las Palmas Medical Center opened El Paso’s first kidney transplant center.

“Today, approximately 289 individuals (in El Paso) need a kidney transplant. We have thousands of people on dialysis,” said Terri Wyatt, a spokeswoman for Las Palmas Medical Center.

“If we can educate people on the importance of donating organs in our lifetime, we will be able to accommodate so many more people who need an organ donation.’

In February, KFOX held an organ donor registration sign-up at Bassett Place. One-hundred thirty three people signed up in less than four hours.

“One organ and tissue donor can save or enhance up to fifty lives,” Silvestri said. “You have your heart, both lungs, your liver, your kidneys, your pancreas and intestines,” Silvestri explained. “Then you have your skin which is just a thin layer of skin from the backs of your arms or back, like a sunburn peel, which can be used to save people who are burn victims … your ligaments and tendons which often help people who have had reconstructive surgery of some sort … your actual bone can save someone. Your corneas can help someone see,” Silvestri said.

She emphasized that no transplantation would prevent a donor from having an open casket funeral, a concern often cited by those looking into organ donation.

“We go out of our way to make sure their experience is a good one because if it's not, they'll tell everyone they know and no one will want to be an organ and tissue donor,” Silvestri said.

And she added, age and current health are not reasons to forego registration. “That's a fear but it's not valid. If your kidneys aren't working, let's say you're a diabetic, that doesn't mean you can't still be an organ donor because your heart may be wonderful for someone, your lungs, your liver. Don't rule yourself out as a donor,” she pressed. “Get on the registry and let the medical professionals make that decision at the time if you are ever in a position to be a donor.”

The “Donate Life” program is less than two years old. Silvestri said if potential donors signed up years ago at their local DPS office, their registration may not be valid because there was no national database for participants. “It was never actually connected to a registry because the registry didn't exist yet,” Silvestri said.

Corral said he has made friends over the years at his dialysis location. Some have died. Some have lived with kidney failure for more than 10 years. Corral does not believe he could survive that long.

“Please if you all are watching, become organ donors. If you get sick, you're in the hospital, they're not going to kill you for your organs,” Corral said. “You will be helping a lot of people and I ... if you believe in God and you think God rewards good deeds, that's a heck of a good deed to do. And you will be rewarded for that, if that's what's your belief, it will happen.” Corral paused, looked up at the ceiling to collect his thoughts. “And if you don’t believe in God, it's still a nice thing to do for your fellow man. You'll be helping out a lot of people.”

http://www.kfoxtv.com/health/19056978/detail.html#-