It doesn't take 20-20 sight to see need for organ donation

Monday, February 4, 2008
Neal Rubin:
It doesn't take 20-20 sight to see need for organ donation

My favorite new arrival in our house at Christmas was my wife's alarm clock, which projects the time onto the ceiling in 2-foot-tall blue numbers. For the first time in my life, I can wake up in the dark and know what time it is without groping for my glasses and knocking over everything on the nightstand.

I've worn glasses since I was 4 years old, and it's not like my vision has improved any since then. My eyesight is the stuff of family legend, not to mention cruel family jokes: "Let's shut the screen door and see if Dad tries to walk through it again!"

Somewhere out there, though, amazing as it seems, lives a person who would be glad to have my eyes. Or, more accurately, my corneas. I'm picturing a remote cabin outside Menominee, home to an elderly lady who likes to read about cats.

I will gladly pass them on, as soon as I'm done with them. Likewise, my heart, lungs, kidneys, liver and even my prized pancreas are there for the taking.

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I've clicked my computer to www.giftoflifemichigan.org and pledged my innards to whoever may need them at the time of my demise. In return, I've been given a sporty decal to place on the front of my driver's license -- a tiny heart that says, in effect, "Too bad about this fuzzy little nearsighted guy, but let's go see whose lives we can save."

Organ donation has always struck me as a gracious final gesture, and it came to mind again last week when I wrote about Gilbert Gower Sr. of Eastpointe, who received an aftermarket heart on his 57th birthday.

I found myself wondering, rhetorically, why everyone in Michigan doesn't sign on to the Michigan Organ Donor Registry via the nonprofit intermediary known as Gift of Life; if you don't have a computer, you can do it at a Secretary of State office or by calling (800) 482-4881.

Then I called, literally, and asked the question.
Reasons for not donating

Jennifer Tislerics of the Gift of Life public education department in Ann Arbor reports that 1,224,608 Michiganians have joined the registry, though not all of them have updated their listing in the past year and entered themselves into the statewide database. Updating is helpful, because very few of us have a driver's license in hand when we expire.

As of Jan. 1, there were 3,145 more patients awaiting transplants than there were available organs, with the tally ranging from kidneys (2,551) to kidneys-and-a-heart (2). Since only 2 percent of people die in a way conducive to donating organs -- in a hospital, on a respirator -- expanding the potential pool is vital.

Tislerics reports that about half of the adults who haven't registered as donors say they don't know how, a problem we've already solved. Objections from the rest typically include:

• It's against their religion. Maybe, Tislerics says. Certain imams and Orthodox rabbis do not support organ donation, and Gypsies aren't wild about it, either, but virtually all major religions are either gung-ho about it or at least neutral.

• It's an invitation for doctors to let you die. Except that isn't what doctors take an oath to do, and the doctors at the life-saving end of things are not the same doctors who harvest or transplant organs.

• It's expensive. Only to Blue Cross; all costs are passed on to the organ recipients.

• It's a reminder of our own mortality. Well, yeah, but no one here gets out alive anyway.

• It's a bad fit with an open casket. Nope; everything is hidden by clothing except bone or cornea extractions, and those items are replaced by prosthetics.

That brings us back to eyes, mine included. The corneas, it seems, have nothing to do with my befuddled outlook on the world. Not even cataract surgery is a deterrent when it comes to reuse.

"We want your eyes," says Dennis Archambault, the marketing director for the Michigan Eye-Bank. I take that as a compliment, and he can have them, though ideally not right away. I still have a lot of screen doors to walk through.

Reach Neal Rubin at (313) 222-1874 or nrubin@detnews.com.

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