Organ Donation is a question most people are asked at the DMV. Do you want to be an organ donor? “Sure” or “I don’t think so.” What information are you getting? Do you know what you are saying yes or no to? For most, the answer to this is no. The general public has a preconceived idea of what organ donation is and most are completely wrong.
Being an organ donor means giving someone else life in the time of your death. It is a selfless act that gives a legacy to those who have died and one more thing for their loved ones to remember them for.
For the general public organ donation means that no matter what the circumstance surrounding their death they can be an organ donor. The truth, less than 1% of all deaths are eligible for organ donation. Less than 1%!!! That is a very small number. There are over 100,000 people on the waiting list for a life saving organ. In order to make a difference in that number people have to consent to donation. Just because you say yes does not mean you will ever be eligible.
In a previous post I described the mechanism of injury that has to happen in order for donation to be considered for someone who is dying. For Mid-America Transplant Services (MTS) we will have 120-150 organ donors a year. Every death that occurs in a hospital in our service area (120 hospitals) has to be called to our organization. That will be upwards of 2000 reportable deaths per year. Of those we will have 120-150 that consent to donation. After further evaluation some consented deaths will not be eligible. What a rare gift.
If you are a parent, imagine your child being so sick from birth that they have spent their entire life as a patient in an ICU. Eventually they are placed on the list for a heart transplant. Without this transplant your precious gift of life will not live to see their next birthday. You as a parent would do anything, give your own heart if you could. The thought of another child dying to give your son/daughter life is depressing and exciting all at the same time. What if you are the family on the other side of this story? Your child has been in a terrible accident and is now brain dead. You have an opportunity to give another family life in the time of your loss. Can you be ok with one scenario and not the other? Put yourself in their shoes.
This doesn’t just go for children. Put the above scenario with your spouse, mother, father, sister, brother, grandma, grandpa, niece, nephew. Can you be ok with wanting an organ to save your loved ones life but not ok with giving?
Being pregnant and taking on new responsibilities professionally and personally steers you away from goals you had previously set. I wanted to keep up with this blog without letting life get in the way. EPIC FAIL!! So… we try again.
Where to start…
Previously I had talked about the several charities I was looking into joining. What was I thinking? There is no way I could fit all those charities into my schedule. However, I have started to focus on a select few and I am enjoying every moment of it.
I am an official member of H.O.P.E Sertoma, a womens charity group that is Helping Overcome Pediatric Emergencies in our area. Most proceeds are given to our sister organization the H.O.P.E Foundation.
H.O.P.E’s biggest fundraising event, Derby Days, is just around the corner on May 6-7. Friday is the Derby Gala with dinner, drinks, live band, auction and presentation of championship horses. Everyone is working to secure auction items and table sponsors for the gala. Saturday is all about the Kentucky Derby. The races will be played live on simulcast and there will be music, food, prizes and more. Last year the Derby raised over $34,000 to benefit the children and this year the goal is set even higher. I joined the club after the Derby last year so I am looking forward to being a part of the festivities. MTS will be sponsoring a table at the gala. We are working to invite some of our hospital partners to join us at the event.
One of H.O.P.E’s smaller events is coming up in June, the Womens Golf Tournament. I am a part of the planning committee. This will be the second year for the tournament and the goal is to have double the turn out. The sponsorship and golfer registration letters will be going out next week. I am looking forward to the event. I hope we can go above and beyond our goal.
It is a great privilege to be a member of this charity. H.O.P.E Sertoma is raising money to aid those families who cannot get assistance from other organizations. The Foundation receives the funds and votes on fulfilling the family requests. The applications cover anything from transportation aid for doctors appointments to partially paying for funeral costs and much more. How awful it must be for a family to be going through a tragedy with their child and not be able to afford everything they need. H.O.P.E is about bridging that gap.
About a month ago I was working on a case when a coworker told me a story of an event that had happened in St Louis earlier that morning.
Before I proceed I need to start with a little bit of education. Brain death is the most common form of death that qualifies for organ donation. Once a patient has suffered from a severe brain injury and the prognosis is grim the hospital contacts an Organ Procurement Organization (OPO). This is who I work for. We then travel to the hospit
al to evaluate the patient and await for brain death to occur and declaration of death to be pronounced. Once death has been declared then our Family Support Specialists approach the family to ask for consent for organ donation.
The consent process changed in the fall of 2008. There are now 48 states that have passed the First Person Consent law. This is the only decision that an individual can make about their medical wishes that their family cannot override in a time of crisis. If I were to go to an attorney’s office Monday and fill out paperwork for a living will, I have wasted my money.
A living will is a description of the medical decisions you want made in the event that you can no longer make them yourself. You have been involved in an automobile accident and have suffered serious injuries, you are in the intensive care unit, on a breathing machine and the doctors are telling your family your injuries are non-survivable. Your spouse looks over your living will, decides they do not agree with the decisions you have made and make their own decisions for your care. Those decisions were made by you in the hopes that your family would not have to make any unwanted, hard and painful choices. In the midst of extreme trauma all logical thinking is out the window. Your living will does not matter if your legal next of kin or Durable Power of Attorney decides to change your wishes.
First Person Consent for organ donation is a different set of laws. I signed-up to be an organ donor on the Missouri Donor Registry and my decision has been made; no one can take that away from me. When the family support person speaks to your spouse, mom, dad, brother, sister etc… your family no longer has to decide if this is something you would have wanted. They can know beyond a shadow of a doubt this is what you wanted, there is no choice that has to be made and everything is going to be done to see that your wishes are followed.
Speaking with your family about the care of your body and the medical treatment you desire in the unfortunate event that you cannot speak for yourself is so important.
I guess story time will have to wait. A little bit of education turned into a lot and I still have more to go. To be continued…
Wow have I lost track of the time. I cannot believe it has been over a month since I have written an entry and it feels like it was last week. Time is flying this year and days are getting away from me. I have learned so much and feel I have grown even more. My ideals are changing, my surroundings are improving and my life is evolving into something I never imagined for myself. I know, big dreamer.
I never pictured myself being in the kind of position I am in now. I don’t really know why, maybe it was because, between work and school full-time, I didn’t have time to think that big . It truly is amazing what you miss when your head is stuck in a text book, reference book, power point presentation etc. I did not have time to think about my future goals or ambitions. Now all of a sudden they are staring me in the face.
I am educating the community and health care professionals on organ donation. I am helping build better relationships between Mid American Transplant Services and our regional hospitals; generating ideas that our CEO would like to take through out the entire region. I am loving the professionalism that is within my new position; working with surgeons, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, planning conferences and meetings. On top of all that I AM SAVING LIVES!!! I have helped with 12 donors in four months, totaling 46 LIVES SAVED and who knows how many others improved through tissue donation.
That is just what is happening in my professional life. Personally I am joining a charity called H.O.P.E Sertoma. This is a local charity that has been designed by women to help raise funds for those suffering from pediatric emergencies. I am also awaiting a response from the March of Dimes local Board of Directors to hopefully become the newest member. I am finding community members that have been touched by organ donation in some way and asking them to be volunteers for us. To share their story and spread the amazing news about organ donation and what it is doing for people across the nation.
I have so much more to tell and write. This position is keeping me extremely busy and fulfilled in my career. I truly hope to get back on track with this because I really feel it will be another means of education and awareness for many causes.
So, I did my first charity event two weeks ago with my husband, Chris. It was the 3 mile Heart Walk for the American Heart Association. We raised $200, not as much as I would have liked but it was something. We were the only ones on our team and we walked the whole way, it felt great. I’m ready to do more.
I also went to the initial volunteer training for the Make-A-Wish foundation. I am so excited to get started with this foundation. I really want to go through training to be a Wish Granter. I would be able to meet kiddos that are terminally ill and their family to find out what it is that would be their greatest wish. Once that wish is established, I would get to help make it happen: the planning, timing, reservations, everything. Oh, I think it would be such a great opportunity and another way to make a difference in the life of the living.
I still need to make phone calls to the Literacy Council and the Boys and Girls Club to set up some volunteer activities with them. This new position is keeping me a lot busier then I ever thought it would. Not that this is a bad thing. I love what I am doing; it is more rewarding then I already knew it would be. I have been going to meetings with the local hospitals, teaching new nurses and nursing students about donation (I really love that part) as well as being on call and being prepared to be at the hospital at any waking moment. This really is the most incredible career I could have ever walked into.
The next team event I am captain of is the March for Babies that I have spoken about in previous posts. I have the support of 5 other walkers and we have raised about 1/5 of our goal. This is a cause that hits very close to home for me; it reaches out to women that fall in the high risk category of pregnancy and those babies that are born premature. I do not have children yet but I am considered high risk and it is great to have a charity out there that would help me if I needed it and I feel I need to give back. Pay it Forward. To help support babies and their mother’s please visit: http://www.marchforbabies.org/team/t1375745.
So I’ve been talking, rather hounding, my husband about eating better and being more active. I would like to have a life partner not one I lose at a very young age. You see he is slightly overweight with high cholesterol and high blood pressure and he turns 30 this year. He also has a family history of diabetes and he is not very active. He scares me. I have seen 35 year old men come into the emergency room with a severe heart attack or stroke and die within hours. These men come in with the same physical history as my husband.
I have signed up to be a speaker for the American Heart Association to spread the word about heart healthy living. This goes hand in hand with donation. The difference is, my patients are those people that chose not to live a healthy life. Now I have a husband that is at risk, dare I say, of being an organ donor from a cholesterol clot moving to his brain and causing a stroke. Not only that risk but high blood pressure causes your heart to work harder and eventually slow down causing blood to be stagnant and form a clot. That clot then becomes dislodged and moves to the brain, guess what, causing a stroke. Ugh, it is really not that hard to take care of yourself people.
Risk factors for heart attack and stroke are essentially the same. There are those you can’t control: increasing age, sex, race, previous heart attack or stroke, and family history. There are factors that you have complete control over: high blood pressure, cigarette smoking, high blood cholesterol, sedentary lifestyle, obesity and diabetes. What people aren’t thinking about is that all of these factors are also increasing your risk for becoming brain dead and your family having to make a decision to donate your organs. Some very sick person will thank you for your inability to save yourself from yourself but your loved ones, I’m afraid, are not going to be so grateful.
Everyone needs to get it out of their head that fad dieting and extreme exercise is the answer to all their health and weight loss problems. Yes I agree that being at a healthy weight for your body and being active is one of the
most important things you can do for yourself but there are right and wrong ways of going about it.
Please visit the American Heart Association site and learn what you can do to save yourself and enjoy your life and family for as long as possible. Don’t be the one that couldn’t prevent themselves from dying young.
I apologize if I am being harsh. Feel free to contact me with any questions.
Fifteen days since I’ve written and those days have been, for the most part, absolutely crazy. I spent the first part of that completing my last stay in St Louis. That’s right I said last (last of the 8 day stretches anyway), I am finally home and getting into some sort of a groove, or at least trying to. The first week home I was not on-call but Springfield was busy busy. I worked two cases but had the potential for four. I slept half the day on the 24th due to being in the operating room on a kid over night.
Did you know that less than 1% of deaths are candidates for organ donation?
Just because someone dies does not mean they are eligible to donate their organs. They have to meet certain criteria; the person has to have sustained some sort of head injury. This means you have a stroke from bleeding (hemorrhagic), maybe from an aneurysm rupture, a vessel tear from high blood pressure or from traumatic head injury. Other reasons for brain injury are caused from lack of oxygen to the brain maybe from your heart stopping for an extended period of time (anoxic) or you have a blood clot in your body that moves to the brain and cuts off oxygen supply to part of the tissue (ischemic).
A traumatic hemorrhage could be sustained from several possibilities. A visit to the chiropractor and you get work done to your neck, the next thing you know your carotid artery (the main artery supplying blood to your brain) has been severed by improper movement. You are 20 years old and out on a joy ride with some friends, the driver is being a prankster and looses control, the car swerves and hits a pole, you aren’t wearing your seat belt and are thrown from the vehicle hitting your head on a tree. This causes your brain to rub against the skull several times causing massive injury throughout the brain. Or, for whatever reason, you get a bullet, knife, piece of a car or any other sharp object penetrating into the brain. All of these scenarios, and many others, cause an injury to the brain that usual involves bleeding, fracture, swelling and lack of oxygen to the brain tissue.
In order to be an organ donor from any of these types of brain injuries you must suffer either severe deficits and require life support for the remainder of your existence (which most people would not want to live like this) or you are declared brain dead.