Regular death is smaller things like arteries, skin and …uh…cornea’s.
I don’t understand this theory entirely, because dead is dead, but it must be because of something that might have happened or theoretically might have happened.
Dunno.
I just think it should be mandatory to donate.
**Lentil man ** Tell your parents this . I make a point of telling my family at every gathering that Should I Bite The Big One soon that I want my organs donated, cremation and a lovely par-tay to send me off nicely to my next life.
I’m a donor. All parts. Have a separate card for my eyes. Am on the bone marrow registry. One of my friends is alive today because a wonderful family donated their son’s organs when he died in an accident. Her successful transplant and the generous, useful life she lives are a blessing to that young man’s family.
We’d have donated our son’s organs when he died suddenly, but circumstances made it impossible. I often think of the many lives that could have benefitted if things had been otherwise.
(My NC driver’s license says I am a “Uniform Donor,” and my daughter thinks it’s sweet of me to be willing to let someone have my uniform.)
First of all, it grosses me out, practically makes me want to throw up. But then I’m like that. I feel faint when I catch that medicinal hospital smell.
Also, I pay alot of taxes. Alot of those taxes go to people who are irresponsible like welfare people who didn’t study in high school and wanted to party instead. Or people on medicare/medicaid who are in ill health b/c they are too fat. Now are all people on welfare or medicare/medicaid irresponsible? No.
Another related reason is that alot of people who need organs have abused their own. I knew a guy whose drug addled uncle wanted him to donate his kidney (or maybe liver, I forgot). This guy (the guy I knew) was into health, fitness, worked out, etc. That’s why his uncle wanted his body parts I guess. I told him no way in hell I would donate so some loser who destroyed his own organs gets a chance to destroy one of mine too.
Many people need organs, I suppose, and it really isn’t their fault. Many of these people are in general in ill health. In the old days they would just die. Sounds cruel, but that was the way it was. Society as a whole was better off by focusing cheap medical care on healthy people who were temporarily sick, instead of spending huge mega amounts of dollars on people who are chronically ill and will probably die soon anyway, or on people who are 90 years old and sucking the medicare system dry.
Not being an organ doner is a subject around which I cannot wrap my (admittedly) tiny brain. Why (aside for religious reasons - these I don’t understand either, but if you’re devout and your faith teaches you to keep your bits and pieces, so be it) on earth do you care (whether it’s icky or not) what happens to your carcass after your spirit (if you believe in one) departs it?
I also agree that an adult should not be a recipient of a donated organ if he/she is not a registered organ doner. I also understand, however, that implementing such a rule would be darn near close to impossible.
I am not an organ doner. As I plan to be mumified and placed inside an enormous pyramidal structure, I will need some of my organs (for the afterlife ya know).
I am an organ donor. It’s in my will as well as in my medical file, and I’ve discussed it with my family. My father was alive for several extra years after receiving a donated organ (from a child, BTW), and my only regret is that I was only able to thank the donor’s family anonymously.
There is something intrinsically sad about receiving an organ–to donate it, the person pretty much had to be in good health and suffer sudden (often traumatic) death.
I’m an organ donor, unless someone should decide to disregard the back of my driver’s license because of the wishes of my next of kin (i.e. Mom). Mom agrees in principle with organ donation, but in times of great stress, she tends to become more Jewish, and Judaism prohibits organ donation. Anyone out there know how I could override wishes of next of kin, as a practical matter?
(Of course, some parts of me are probably pretty useless; asthmatic lungs, heart with leaky mitral valve, and left Achilles tendon which has been surgically modified probably beyond all recognition. On the bright side, the corneas, liver, and kidneys should be in good shape.)
I’ve informed all my close family members of my wish to be an organ donor in the event of my death. My cousin died in February of 2001 (we buried him on Valentine’s Day) and his mother chose to donate his organs. Later she got to attend a meeting with some of the recepients, all of whom were just desperately grateful for the gifts, and they got to mourn the death of the gift-giver together.
I’m also a blood donor and have tried my best to get my friends and relatives to donate as well. Some do, but most don’t, for what are in my mind rather bizarre reasons – several have said they didn’t want their blood going to save “idiots” and “niglets” (as they are, of course, the ultimate moral authority on who deserves to live and die – but I’ll save that one for the Pit) and another can’t seem to understand that once she’s dead she’s very unlikely to need those organs anymore. One friend told me she refuses to sign the donor slot on her driver’s license because “the doctors might not try hard enough to save me if they see it”.
Isabelle, please check out the link in my previous post. My Great Debates thread dealt with this exact topic.
Welcome aboard(s), Lentil Man!
Please talk over the subject with your parents or guardian. They should be able to understand your reasons for wanting to be an organ donor and respect your wishes. You are to be commended for your stance on this topic.
Aries28, please reconsider your position on this. Child donors are among the most important because of size limitations that reduce the field of possible donors. Please read about the story of Nicholas Green. The brave decision his parents made during their darkest hour changed the way a nation regarded organ donation and saved the lives of many children.
I have met many people who are alive today because they received a donated organ. They come from all walks of life, professional athelete, pastor, housewife, office worker, you name it. All of the recipients I’ve met are extremely grateful for the new chance at life they’ve been given.
I’ve also met some survivors of persons who have donated. They take great comfort in knowing that their loved one, who has left prematurely, has made a difference in someone else’s life. In many cases the donor has made a difference in many peoples lives.
The need for donated organs far exceeds the number of organs available for donation. One of the worst URBAN LEGENDS the donor services face, is the one mentioned in this thread about health care providers giving less than adequate care to persons who have signed a donor card. Its simply not true. I don’t care where you read it, or who you heard it from.
Deb2world is correct. When you sign your card, tell your friends(they say 5 friends where I reside), so that authorities can confirm your wishes.
Yes, when I’m done using mine, if they are any good, they can use them.
If I knew my loved-one’s desires before they died then, yeah, I’d say “harvest away.”
Slight hijack - I found out two weeks after my dad passed away that he too wanted to be an organ donor (even his driver’s licence said so) but my eldest sister told me that Mom had him “sitting around” for a few hours after he died, hoping I’d show up and see him (I was out all day and didn’t know what had happpened until I got home at 1:00 am). Because he was no longer “fresh” (sorry, I don’t know what the proper term would be), his organ could no longer be of use.
Two things REALLY bother me about this story:
Upon hearing this, it was like learning he had died AGAIN. Somehow, knowing his little-used liver (Dad didn’t drink) or some such thing could’ve postponed a funeral for another family but didn’t made me even sadder.
To this day, I have no idea why my mother would’ve wanted me so see Dad in that state (we’re not close, so I’ve never asked). I freaked-out as it was when I first saw him in his casket, so how the hell would I have reacted if I saw him in the hospital with the tubes and all still in him? It must be a generational thing, because I’ve only heard of those 50-and-older doing this.
Seriously, if anyone has the answer to #2, I’d love to hear the logic behind it.
I’m sorry, Surreal, that you were able to find an anecdote of a botched harvest on such a reliable (ahem) news source as Geocities. Could you possibly find a source on CNN, nytimes.com, or something besides a Free Web Hosting service?
And how about some statistics, too? There are plenty of anecdotes about people who temporarily survived tragedy, such as Phineas Gage, but that doesn’t mean that these things are everyday occurrences.
…the doctors who are trying to save your life are not the same doctors who are in charge or organ harvest! Please get some facts. The surgeons saving you have nothing to do with deciding to harvest your organs. In fact, the surgical team is not allowed to contact the family or even inform the harvest team until death is declared.
The harvest team is only notified after it’s too late.
Are mistakes made? Yes. Mistakes are always made, in everything. But you might as well not breathe, not eat, not get in your car, not leave the house, not ever see a doctor in case something might go wrong. That would be folly.
Get some facts, please. I am an organ receipient of a cadaveric harvest and I am forever grateful for the opportunity to continue to live. The family who donated, of whom I know nothing, suffered terrible tragedy, for their loss occured September 11, 2001, the day the WTC were hit. I wrote them to tell them how grateful I was, and am.
I signed the organ donation sticker on my medicare card, but I don’t know that they’ll take them. I lived in Germany from 1990-1993, and due to BSE/vCJD concerns, I am banned from giving blood, and I assume organs as well. Although in the case of an organ, if I have zero signs and symptoms, and it might add at least a couple years of relatively healthy life (assuming vCJD can even be transmitted this way) the recipients might deem it worthwhile…I don’t really know how that works.
I’d LIKE to give blood and donate organs when I die (or even perhaps alive, like liver or kidney or bone marrow) but right now I don’t think they’d really let me. I’ve tried to convince my SO to donate blood, but he’s a little oogy with needles. He’s ok with donating organs, though.
Having been through the organ transplant process with the friend mentioned above from the onset of her illness 7 years ago, I don’t believe people are “bumped up” for any reason other than compatibility of an available organ. My friend is Black, and was very near death when the liver she received became available (she had familial, non-alcohol liver disease).
Since I would hope to be the recipient of a life-saving, sight-restoring or life-enhancing transplant if I needed it, I can’t think of any reason not to be a donor.
I accompany my friend when she goes to the hospital for routine biopsies. She carries a small Playmate cooler with her medications, and we’ve found it fun to trot briskly through the halls, holding her cooler reverently. People make way for us, assuming we’re delivering an organ.
summerbreeze, from what I know of transplant, that is the case. A few tidbits:
Transplants are based primarily upon blood type.
Kidneys are durable organs outside the body, comparatively speaking–say, about 36 hours–and can wait slightly longer before transplant. In certain situations, there is usually time to tissue-match a cadaveric donor kidney, matching six specific antigens. In the event of a perfect match with a receipient, it will go first to the perfect match, even if someone else might have been waiting longer. Often, the patient can wait another few weeks or months on diaylsis until another organ comes up.
Livers are not as durable as kidneys and can survive far less time outside a human body–say about 18 hours. For this reason, livers are not tissue-matched. There isn’t time, and there is no long-term dialysis fallback for liver failure. Patients accumulate time on the waiting list, as kidney patients do, and the severity of their symptoms is tracked. Worsening conditions bump the patient to a higher-priority status.
There are occasionally cases like Mickey Mantle’s transplant where a celebrity gets a transplant immediately. This has nothing to do with money or payoffs. The foundation is simply trying to raise public awareness of how organ transplant can save lives; they are using the temporary spotlight to inform people of the good transplant can do.
*FISH, ** actually there was a story in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune about an ongoing investigation into organ waitlisting practices at one Chicago hospital. The allegation is that some patients were listed as sicker than they really were in order to get moved up the list.
So far, this seems to have been the act of the organ transplant team or administration at the hospital rather than of any wrongdoing on the part of the patients; they were trying to get more transplant work for the hospital, or that’s how the story goes at this point. But everything is still very much up in the air, and certainly everyone who received an organ did actually need an organ. It’s not like any organs were wasted.
I’ve posted this here before but here goes again. Ten years ago my 14 year old daughter died. We donated her organs because we know someone else might not have to lose someone they loved. A young mother with three children was given one of her kidneys. She’s had ten more years to watch her children grow, to calm their fears and set them on the road to life. Every time I visit the cemetery I know that family isn’t.
Three years ago I was diagnosed with heart failure caused by a virus I never knew I had. I’m not on the transplant list yet but will be in the near future. If I don’t get the heart that I need The doctors can harvest any part of me they want.
Every time I visit the cemetery I know that family isn’t.
Tinkertoy, I’m filled with sorrow at your loss, admiration for your decision, joy for the family preserved by your decision, and regret that we weren’t able to do the same. Today is the 8th anniversary of my son’s death.
Eva Luna, I went to look at that story, and it tallies with what I have been told about transplant surgery in general: it runs in the black, consistently. My insurance covered my transplant, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. And sure, there are probably cases of fraud or deception when there’s lots of money at stake, especially if the rest of the hospital is struggling financially.
The liver transplant priority list, as it was explained to me:
Priority 2: Some symptoms of chronic liver damage, mild liver failure, could get worse.
Priority 1b: Worsening chronic liver failure. Patients can be moved to here from 2 as time goes on.
Priority 1a: Sudden onset acute liver failure, as (for instance) from poisoning. Patients in this category are generally in the ICU, on emergency life-sustaining equipment, and they are some hurtin’ pups. I suspect this is what was being done: moving patients to this very short list.
I have tried to find this information online but I haven’t been able to locate it.
This, to me, is the argument against a national organ donor registry. Some large hospitals in metropolitan areas would plump for all of the work that they could get. Some regions, you may know, discriminate between patients who are healthy and those who are alcoholic; between whose who abstain and those who do illegal drugs; and so on. Other regions do not – they’ll do the transplant for whoever’s got the cash.