Saving Lives, One Organ at a Time - Christine Anderson
Every year in the United States, the number of people with end-stage renal disease awaiting a kidney transplant far exceeds the number of available organs. In 2023, over 89,000 patients were on the United Network for Organ Sharing list awaiting a kidney donor while 27,332 were able to receive a transplant that year. The average wait time for a kidney in the United States is 3-5 years, with some waiting much longer depending on blood type and other factors. Many will die from complications of their end-stage renal disease before a donor match is found. Current research to bridge the gap in the number of available kidneys has turned to transplanting pig kidneys into humans. Even if successful, we are many years away from this being a viable solution to our current imbalance. A far simpler solution is right in front of us.
We don’t need pigs, we need people.
In the early 1980’s, when transplant surgery became a regular practice the only way to receive that lifesaving gift was from a brain-dead patient whose family had chosen to donate their organs for transplant. In 1995, laparoscopic living donor nephrectomy allowed for removing a kidney from a living donor, and increased the number of transplants performed each year. The latest advance in living donor surgery is Kidney Paired Donation, where compatible pairings are identified using the data in the UNOS System, and those willing to donate give to someone else’s family member and then theirs, in return, receives a compatible kidney. And even with such advances, we still fall short of bridging the gap between the number of patients in need and the number who receive a transplant. But the potential exists to close that gap even further, not with pigs, but with people.
Only 58% of licensed drivers in the United States have chosen to check the box on their driver’s license that designates them as a registered organ donor. That’s a lot of kidneys and other transplantable organs potentially going to waste. Some of the undesignated 42% may still be donors, if they have expressed their wishes to their family. But in the tumultuous time of learning a family member is brain dead from a tragic accident or a massive stroke, the decision about organ donation can be overwhelming, even if their wishes are known. And what if they are not? Checking the box on your driver’s license is one way to do that.
I will admit I have not done this myself, so dispelling a few widely held myths about organ donation might be as advantageous for others as it was for me. Many people worry that doctors won’t work as hard to save them if they are a potential organ donor. As a nurse working in the operating room at one of the busiest kidney transplant centers in New Jersey, I can tell you from personal experience, this suspicion is entirely untrue. The team of medical professionals working to save you doesn’t know or care about your organ donor status. They are working tirelessly to save your life because they don’t want to lose any patient. They see each death as a personal failure, and they would never knowingly allow that to happen on their watch. Some people worry the doctor will sign their death certificate too quickly and they won’t actually be dead. In fact, the criteria for demonstrating that a patient is brain dead is far more stringent than that used for certifying any other kind of death. Additional assessments of reflexes and apnea status are repeated and the death must be certified by two physicians who have no part in the transplant process.
Being an organ donor is giving the gift of life. Just one donor can save the lives of eight people, since paired organs like lungs and kidneys are given to two different recipients. And while our focus here has been on kidney donation, the impact of one donor is so much greater. A new heart. Lung. Liver. Pancreas. Intestine. A new kidney. Eight families changed forever because of one individual donor. Grief avoided. Holidays celebrated. Lives lived.
Go online to your Department of Motor Vehicles and fill out the form that designates you as an organ donor. Join me on the journey to save the lives of those who will die this year if we do not. Whether as an act of charity or altruism, practicality or idealism, you can make a choice to give the gift of life.
About "In This Lifetime" by Christine Anderson
When is forgiveness more than a word? When is forgiveness an act that becomes a gift of grace?
Cherie Hollister is a widowed mother of three young daughters after the tragic death of her husband in a military training exercise. She is confronted in her tiny apartment by her mother who asks her to be tested as a potential donor for her brother, Jake, a recovering drug addict who needs a kidney transplant. Glancing at eight-year-old Molly, whose scars and hearing loss were brought about by Jake’s negligence, Cherie fumes at the request. Her faith tells her to forgive her brother, but can she choose to save the man she has hated since the night of the fire.
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