It makes me sad to say this, because I believe in organ donation, but I’ve gone to California’s Remove Me From the Registry website and taken my name off the list of organ donors. The decision was made after watching the gradual loss of our medical system’s culture of the sanctity of human life.
I’m thinking about this right now because of a horrifying story from Central New York about a woman taken to the emergency room in 2009 for a drug overdose, who was very nearly cut up for parts, only she woke up just before they got going.
An Arizona license plate sticker not received in the mail may be due to an incorrect mailing address. In the state of Arizona, the law requires all citizens to give the correct address to the DMV. In the state of Arizona, the law requires all citizens to give the correct address to the DMV.
What makes this so disturbing, and what got the hospital fined (a mere) $6,000.00, is that “Although a nurse told doctors that Burns was recovering from her overdose, those same doctors pronounced her dead.” Then they called her family and got permission to take her organs. However, “when a nurse performed a mandatory reflex test on Burns, her toes curled downward. She appeared to be breathing independently of a hospital respirator, and her lips and tongue were said to have moved moments before doctors prepared to remove her organs”
Yet, in the face of all these indications that a serious mistake was being made, “the nurse then followed instructions to give Burns a powerful sedative, a seemingly unnecessary move if the patient were actually dead.”
Fortunately, before they began harvesting her organs, the overdose victim woke up and they called the whole thing off. You should read the Yahoo story about this incident – it’s a cautionary tale.
I’m afraid I’m wondering how many people don’t wake up in time…..and just thinking about that induced me to make different arrangements for donating my organs. I don’t want decisions about my life and death to be made by faceless strangers who don’t love me and who definitely have priorities other than MY well-being in mind. So, I’ve decided to take care of a possible future when I can’t speak for myself by filling out The Will To Live, and NOT a “Living Will”, or the sort of generic “advance directives” that doctors and hospitals try to get us to sign.
I hope that you’ll at least go to the Q&A page, and see if it makes sense to you. The stakes couldn’t be higher.
Published 4:03 PM EST Jan 22, 2013
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Starting this week, Kentucky joins 46 states that promote the organ donor program with an icon on driver's licenses.
Circuit court clerks' offices in Kentucky already ask everyone getting licenses if they want to be on the donor registry, but only 35% of residents have said yes.
Nationally, the donor designation rate is about 43%, according to Donate Life America, a donor advocacy organization, and 6 in 10 people in nearby Indiana and Ohio have said they will donate. More than 116,000 people nationwide are awaiting transplants.
Now, those who agree to be donors will have an icon printed on their licenses.
Cheryl Parish, whose daughter Anna had a liver transplant after being on a waiting list for three years, said she hopes the simplicity will prompt more people to join the donor registry.
'It was so hard waiting,' she said, grateful her daughter received a donor liver in May. 'People need to know how many lives they can save.'
Her daughter echoed the sentiment: 'Organ donation means a lot to me because it's kind of given me a second chance at life.'
Kentucky had been one of four states — Arizona, Texas and Vermont are the others — without a permanent icon on licenses, said Shelly Snyder, director of the Kentucky Circuit Court Clerks' Trust For Life.
Previously, clerks have used stickers. But the stickers don't always stay on, and the signatures on the back of licenses can fade or rub off.
'Every registered donor gives hope to more than 116,000 patients and their families waiting for a lifesaving organ transplant,' Snyder said, adding that every donor icon — a heart printed on the license — says to those waiting, 'If I could save you, I would.'
David Nicholson, circuit court clerk for Jefferson County, agreed that this icon gives organ donation a higher profile and should raise awareness.
'It's going to generate conversations,' Nicholson said, adding that he hopes people will learn how passing on their organs saves lives, rather than rely on myths and speculation about the donor process. 'It's just important that we have the ability to create the awareness.'
Sarah Gilbert of Lexington, Ky., said she is among those who needed a greater awareness of the need to act — but her awareness came through personal tragedy.
Gilbert's 4-year-old son, Jacob, died four months ago of heart disease after more than a year waiting for a donor heart. Jacob was diagnosed at 18 months with an incurable heart disease and was placed on the transplant list within months.
Eventually, he became too sick to be eligible for a donor heart.
'There's no description of the pain,' said Gilbert, who herself hadn't signed up to be a donor despite having worked at a hospital. She is now on the donor registry.
Gilbert said it was agonizing for her husband and two other children to wait every day for a call that a heart was available and then realize it was never going to come.
Donors 'could be helping one family not experience such unimaginable pain,' she said. 'I want to help another mom not feel this.'
Jesse Halladay also writes for The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal.
Published 4:03 PM EST Jan 22, 2013