When you first think of an organ donation what comes to your mind? When I think about it the first thing that comes to my mind is the gift of life. Maybe soon that is the first thing that will come to your mind as well. This gift can be given by you whether you are living or deceased. If someone you loved dearly was diagnosed with kidney cancer and needed a kidney to survive, what would you do? Would you look for someone who was willing enough to give one away or would you just donate it yourself? The answer to this question depends on one simple fact in your life, this fact is if you have decided to be a donor or if you have decided not to be. In today’s society, people worry more about themselves than others. This results in selfish acts that will benefit no one but themselves. Also, technology is on the rise to improve the ways of life. As a year progresses on, so does technology. Driver license divisions offer a special feature that people can get on their license so that they can help people live by becoming a donor. Being a donor is a big deal! People need to have a second chance to live a healthy life and only you can help them do that by making a large decision to be a donor. This can be a living donor which occurs when you donate blood, a kidney, bone marrow, or other things that still allow your body to function at a normal rate. A deceased donor is when you pass away and they take parts of your body that still work and will help someone else’s body function how it is supposed to, to keep them alive.
These days, people are more wrapped up in themselves then they have been in a long time. A simple act of service seems more like a death march. Many may say that they need to look out for themselves before helping someone else but when another person has a huge trial come their way, very few are willing to put aside their busy life for a minute to help the one in true need. People are also afraid that if they give too much up of their lives then it will ruin them in the long run. Becoming a donor is a big part of the word “service.” It involves someone being willing to give certain things such as blood, tissues, and organs to other people who are in need of them. The chances may not always be in your favor but think about their situation. There is a greater chance of a transplant surgery working than there is of it not working.
Although surgery may work many people have doubts about it because they believe that donating organs is unsanitary and should not be done. When you think about it, there is a risk to everything in life. When you cross the street, you have a chance at getting hit. When you go to school, you have a risk of getting sick. When you sleep, you have a risk of not breathing. If you live your life in fear of the things that could be, you will not experience much. People become donors and take risks of saving peoples’ lives. Most of the time these people do not even become donors until after they are deceased which causes no risk to the donor.
Organs, tissues, and blood are run through many tests to make sure they will do their best in the new body. The blood type is especially tested many times because if the wrong type of blood is placed into someone’s body than the blood will clot and cause the rest of the body to which will result in instant death. Doctors do not want this to happen so they take their time to make sure that things are all right and the way that they need to be for a procedure to run smoothly and benefit everyone.
Maybe you are wondering who is able to donate. When you turn sixteen you get to decide for yourself whether or not you would like to be a donor, but, you need consent from a parent to have any operation that involves a transplant until you are of the age of eighteen. This is because your parent is still your legal guardian and sometime they know what will end up being best for you in the long run.
Today, the use of technology is something that is taken for granted by many, but to some, the use of technology could be their only hope. More than fifty years ago, technology became a miracle in the lives of many. Technology was helping society out a lot more than fifty years ago you may be thinking, but not like this. Technology found a way to take a healthy, working body part or organ from one person’s body and transfer it into another body that was in great need of it. Since that day, more than fifty years ago, hundreds of thousands of people are still alive because of one thing technology was able to help with. With this technology matches are found to help the recipient have the best possible organ placed in their body that will help their body the most. Although tests are ran, there is always a chance that something will be missed such as AIDS, cancer, and other blood diseases. Even though there is a chance at this it is very unlikely. If technology has increased this much for our use, we should take advantage of it and use it to benefit ourselves and the ones that we love.
With all these tests you would think that most the time the procedure is pretty successful. Well it is for the most part. In 2009 the average percents of people living years after their transplants for a lung was 54%, a kidney 69%, and a liver 73.8%. The greatest shocker to me was that people who had had a transplant on their heart had the highest rate of living. The percentage for people who had had this operation and was still alive after five years was 74.9%. I also found it very interesting that 60% of living donors are women, but when it comes to deceased donors, men take the lead. These facts also show that the highest rate for people to pass away after five years is mainly in the white population. This can also be because people of the white race receive more transplants than people of any other race which allows for their success rate to seem different when averaged out among others. All race’s take to transplants about the same though. Everyone’s body looks different on the outside but on the inside everything is pretty much the exact same and everyone has about the same chance of surviving or passing away from a transplant.
I bet you are thinking in your mind, well, “what kinds of things can be donated?” The parts of the body that can be donated or transplanted are: the eyes, lungs, heart, the liver, kidneys, pancreas, intestines, veins, the skin, bone, blood, plasma, tissues and tendons (Organ Donation: Opportunities for Action.”) All of these things that seem so every day and disguised to us, could mean a world and another tomorrow to someone in need of it. You have the power to make their wishes come true by allowing them one more day to be with the ones they love, one more day to enjoy their favorite things, and one more day to live a healthy, almost normal lifestyle. Become a donor and give someone the greatest gift in the world. The gift of life.
When you go to the drivers license division to get your license, they ask you many questions. Mainly very important ones like a social security number, birth date, proof of residence, weight, height, eye color, hair color, and so on. Then they ask you if you would like to be a donor or not. When you think about all the topics that you just got asked about, they are all very important things. Becoming a donor is also a very important thing and that is why it is asked along with all the rest. It is something that needs to be encouraged to help save people’s lives around the world.
They ask you what may seem like a small question, but truly it is a huge decision that could either make or break a person’s life. The question asks whether or not you would like to be a donor. What is a donor you may ask, there are different types of donors: living and deceased. For example, a man (Boden) was interviewed about a time when he had the chance to be a living donor. He had a surgery that caused a huge amount of weight loss. After this weight loss he had a lot of extra skin on his body that needed to be removed. The doctors in this procedure asked him if he was a donor. He answered yes. They then went on to tell Mr. Boden that he could be a living donor by allowing the hospital to donate all of his extra skin to an army burn unit to help repair the skin of many people. He was very willing and donated his skin. This made him a living donor. Another example would be a brother donating one of his kidneys to his twin while he was alive so that the other may also stay alive.
An example of a deceased donor would be when a person passes away in an accident. There was a boy around the age of twenty that was in a car accident that killed him instantly. He checked the yes box on the donor question and when his body was taken from the accident the doctors were able to take tissues, organs, and blood from his body and donate almost thirty things to people in need all because he made a decision to do good for others. His mother told of the process that they went through as a family and the excitement on the faces of all the recipients that they were able to help through such a tragedy.(Brown)
The need for organs is real. Every eleven minutes someone new is put on the waiting list that needs to have a transplant.(U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.) Almost twenty people pass away each day because there is such a great shortage in donors and there is nothing that can happen to save their lives besides someone who is willing to donate. According to the U.S. Government over organ donation, today there are about 105,567 people on the waiting list, 28,463 people who have received a transplant, and 14,630 people who are donors (living and deceased.) Are you part of the small percent?
According to the National Kidney Foundation (Coalition on Donation & Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation), waiting for a transplant is just a part of the test to help make the “rocky road of the transplant journey” seem a little easier than the waiting part. For those of you who need a transplant, or know someone who does, there are many support groups out there to help cope with the hard road that you or the loved one will soon be placed on. There is hope though and people out there are donors. Become a donor so you can be the same kind of hope in someone else’s life, maybe even just the hope in your loved one’s life.
Organ transplantation is a big process, one that takes a lot of time, resources, and money. It is not easy but in the end it could be worth it. The process involves putting yourself or the person needing the transplant on a waiting list. When put on this list they try to find people that would be able to match the organ the best. This involves blood tests, tissue samples or bone marrow samples, and many other different samples depending on the type of organ needed in the body. After the samples are taken by the people who may be matches, they wait. The samples need to be inspected very carefully because one mistake with a match could end someone’s life immediately. After the samples are cleared, then a match is found. This is a very overwhelming moment for both the donor and the recipient.
One woman I interviewed was the wife of an organ recipient. A man that was interviewed was a recipient. Many others that I spoke with were also in the same situation as these two individuals. The woman was very against the thought of anyone receiving a transplant, while the man was all for it. As I spoke longer during the interview I began to realize why they had such different perspectives on a situation that seemed to be the same.
This woman I spoke with, (Hatch) told me a story about her husband. Her husband needed to have a kidney transplant because his were shutting down and if he did not get something fast then he would not make it more than a couple of months. The kidney was from a deceased donor matched the husbands needs and was placed inside him to help his body but shut down only a week later because it had been defective from the first owner. He was able to receive another kidney shortly after the first one lacked in health. The medicines he had to take for his body to accept the new kidney were “like taking a medicine to poison his body and put him in excruciating pain,” as stated by his wife. He died shortly after because the kidney had been rejected and the medicine was shutting other things down. She was left to raise her two children by herself. This made her thoughts towards organ donations very negative but to every sad or scary part in a fairytale, there can always be a happily ever after for others.
The other man I talked with had also received a kidney and pancreas transplant. He talked to me about the pain and anguish he had been through and how hard it was to accept them into his body. However, he was lucky enough to survive through the pain and medication and his body was able to accept the organs. He was able to see his children and someday maybe his grandchildren. He is a very active man now and is living a great life thanks to the people who were willing to check yes in the donor column on the driver’s license. Because of people’s decisions his life has been saved and he will forever look upon those people as heroes to not only him but heroes in the eyes of all of his family members as well because if it were not for the donors then he would not be able to be with his family today.
I gave a survey wondering how many people actually knew about transplants. I was surprised that there were a lot more people that knew about transplants and donation than I had expected. The first question I asked was if they or their parents were donors. Surprisingly to me, out of the fifty people I surveyed, all of them except around ten people were not donors and neither were their parents. After this question I then asked the people in the survey if they knew someone that had received a transplant and if they had had any problems with it now or after the procedure. About 85% said yes. Most of the time the people that were surveyed said it was because of the body rejecting the new organ or the medicine causing a lot of harsh problems. This was surprising to me because I felt like not very many people experienced problems with this procedure but this opened my eyes to how dangerous it really can be.
Although, in a survey that I gave, many of the people talked about the problems that occurred during or after the procedure, I then found out whether the person survived or not. Out of the 85% that had problems only about 5 of those people passed away eventually after getting the transplant. Transplants help save many peoples’ lives every day. Think about it, if it were not for the transplant in the first place then probably 100% of the people that were known by those who participated in the survey would have passed away a lot sooner than with the new organ helping to save their body.
In conclusion, some people today are too caught up in their own lives to worry about what is happening in other people’s lives or how they can help them. Be the exception. Be willing to become a donor and give to others in need, even if it does not happen until after you have passed away. Technology is advancing which in turn is making operations safer and more accurate than they have been in the past which allows for better results for both the donator and the recipient. The rate of living after receiving increases as technology expands. The drivers license division sees it as a question that is important. They encourage people to help others and to be a giving person and select yes. Selecting to become a donor does not mean that you will be a donor. It means that if something were to happen and they needed a certain thing from you to keep another person alive, you would be willing to give it up. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. If you were in desperate need of something to survive but no one around you wanted to be a donor than you would have no hope. You have the opportunity to become hope and a hero just by checking a little box that says” yes I will be a donor!” Do not become one of those people who support organ donation but decide that they are not going to be one themselves. That is not practicing what you preach and defeats the purpose. Be willing to make a difference in lives of many if something were to happen to you.
Think about it, when you pass away, in many religions, they will either bury you in the ground and your body will begin to rot away, or they will place you in a crematorium and burn you to ashes and set you in an urn. Why not donate the part of your body that others could use for their benefit to help them live instead of destroying these things that could save a person’s life. Your body will not be needed so use it for a good cause, to save someone’s life.
When the time comes for you to become a donor or not, are you going to live your life in fear and click no, or are you going to take a stand and become a hero in the life of someone. Who knows, you could be a hero to the next president or even to the little kindergarten girl down the road that always waves at you with a smile on her face when you pull into the neighborhood. The time may even come when the opportunity to donate opens up to save the life of a spouse, sibling, or parent. What will you do then? The choice is yours. Live on through someone else so they can have the chance to shine just like you have had.
Decide to become a donor. It may just be one of the best decisions you will end up making for the rest of your life. Are you willing to give the greatest gift of life to someone else and help them live to see their children grow up, or see them go to college and get married, or maybe even start the first grade in elementary school. Become a donor. You will not regret the great things you can do for others because of it.
I am a donor and I have many family members who also are donors. I also have many family members who have needed a transplant. Being a donor is not an ego boost but a worthy decision to save a life and help a generation continue because you were willing to give a little of yourself so they could have they rest of their life. Be a donor.
