Tag Organ Donation

Be A Hero

Michael 4 Comments

April is half over! In closer to normal years, people throughout the United States would be rushing to get to a post office to have their tax returns postmarked before midnight. It’s not a normal year. For the second April 15 in a row, it’s not been a normal year. For some.

Then there are some 107,000 people who would like today to turn extraordinary before midnight. Those are the people waiting for a transplant. Wait. Make that 107,001. About every 9 minutes another person is added to the list, another person moves another step away from normal. By the end of tonight 17 people will move off the list but not because they got their transplant.

DLAIf the numbers don’t get you – 107,000 waiting for transplant, a new person added every 9 minutes, 17 people dead each day because they did not get their transplant – how about this? April is half over. April is National Donate Life Month. There’s a Presidential proclamation and everything even. How many times did Donate Life Month headline a news report this month? How many people took to the streets to protest the needless loss of life of seventeen people yesterday, and the day before, and before that and before that and the one before that too?  How many times did you even hear about Donate Life Month before today?

Last year, 39,000 transplants were performed. I’ll do the math for you. That’s 106 transplant operations each day. At one added every 9 minutes, that’s 160 new additions to the transplant list. Every day we add 54 more people than we are transplanting.  That’s why the average waiting time for a kidney, which is the most common transplant performed, is 3 to 5 years. (Since I know you’re curious, lung and heart transplant waiting lists are about 6 months, pancreas about a year, and liver close to 5 years. Of course, a patient’s time on a waiting list is a factor of organ needed, blood and tissue type needed, and severity of illness.)

Saving lives is rarely a trending topic of Twitter, there are not many infographics on giving life on Facebook, and I haven’t seen one of those “How You Can Help” Instagram posts on alleviating the pain and suffering of up to 8 people with one act. More actually, and some even while you’re still alive! 

The number that gets thrown around a lot is that every organ donor can save 8 lives. One heart, two lungs, a liver, a pancreas, two kidneys, and the intestines. You can add to that two cornea, a lot of skin and a handful of other non-categorized tissues like the abdominal wall. That’s from a deceased donor.  Want to be a hero and still be around to feel good about it after the transplant. Living donations aren’t restricted to kidneys although they are the most common living donor organs transplanted. In addition to giving a kidney to transplant you can also donate a portion of your liver, pancreas and intestines, and one lung, For the most recent period, March of this year, the Organ Procurement and Transportation Network of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, reported 9,878 transplant surgeries of all types performed for March 2021 from 4,740 donations.* But that’s just solid organ donations. You can also donate bone marrow for transplant. And if all of that seems too icky for you, there’s still blood donation.

Don’t let the second half of Donate Life Month go by as innocuously as the first. Do something. At the very least register to be an organ donor after life when you renew your drivers license.  For more information on solid organ donation and transplant in the United States go to https://www.organdonor.gov/. You won’t make the news, nobody will say you name, and there will not be parade in your honor. Do it anyway.

* How can you perform more surgeries than you had donations? From living donors you can’t, but from deceased donors you can transplant multiple organs. In March there were 1,463 living donors responsible for 1,478 transplants (multiple living organ donations are rare but possible with kidney/pancreas transplants) and 4,740 deceased donors contributed to 9,878 transplants.

 

Have a Heart, Please

Michael 2 Comments
For such a short month with only 28 days, 29 this and every Presidential election year affording candidates an additional 24 hours to make fools of themselves, February is chock full of imposters, sequels, and me too holidays.
 
The most famous of non-holidays comes up next week but has been in full fledged celebration by car dealers, furniture stores, and discount houses for weeks now. Of course that is the never authorized, not recognized Presidents Day.  Not being an official national holiday has not stopped business from taking advantage of consumers with “the biggest savings of the year” nor unions taking advantage of businesses with demands of yet another day off with pay. Of course the real holiday is Washington’s Birthday, never celebrated on his actual birthday because that would mean the loss of a 3 day weekend in most years. Bonus points for anybody who can identify Washington’s actual birthday without Google.
 
Looking for a reason to drink to excess and St. Patrick’s Day is a whole month away. Don’t fret or fear, Mardi Gras is here. What started out a few hundred years ago as a day of atonement and confession before Lent begins has morphed into “let’s eat everything in sight, have parades all day, drink all night, and show our boobs (pardon me) in exchange for a string of plastic beads.” Although the date varies because Ash Wednesday varies because Easter varies (you remember those days, right?), it most often is during February that merchants along Bourbon Street grease the poles outside their establishments to deter drunken idiots from trying to climb them.
 
For 134 years a peace loving furry woodland creature has been forecasting Spring’s arrival in a quaint Pennsylvania town. Of course this is commemorated in the most important day in the modern calendar, February 2, Groundhog Day. Sometime, details are sketchy exactly when, meteorologists began celebrating National Weatherman’s Day, now known of course as National Weatherperson’s Day on February 5. There’s logic to this they say. That is the birthday of John Jeffries, purportedly the first to record daily weather observations. That would be fine. Many professions recognize their pioneers. But this year I noticed on February 5 more news snippets decrying Punxsutawney Phil’s bold prediction of an early spring with repeated references to his predictions being accurate only 40% of the time. I did a little research on this. Phil is predicting for 6 weeks! According to National Weather Service data although a 7 day forecast is accurate 80% of the time, a 45 day forecast (about 6 weeks) has an accuracy rate of 40-50%. Hmmm. Methinks and all that jazz. 
 
February is the month of love recognized as National Weddings Month (I would have thought June, no?), Creative Romance Month, and Affair to Remember Month (no clarification if that refers to the movie or a tryst), with International Flirting Week (for the not so serious?) tossed in on the month’s third week. But if those and the chocoholic’s dream date Valentine’s Day don’t fill your bill we can now add, and on this very day, Galentine’s Day. A day with origins similar to and about as real as Festivus and Friendsgiving which are now also apparently really real. And yes, the wanting to be next to be really real, Palentine’s Day is making inroads also. And here all these years I’ve been sitting at home alone without a romantic other half to celebrate. Gee, who would have thought one could make a holiday out of picking up the phone and asking a couple friends to go out for a drink. I would have have missed the boat and called that something like Thursday but then I’d have missed out on the greeting card conscesssions. (Oh yes you can. Check out your local card shop.) 
 
One day in the month that should be a real deal holiday with cards, gifts, TV specials and days off for proper celebrations (with pay if you can swing it) is February 14, no, not the flowers and chocolate day, but National Organ Donor Day. Hop over to organdonor.gov to find out about how organ and tissue donation works and how to register to donate. Ah, the gift of giving your heart to someone. Now that’s true love. And nobody will throw beads at you.
 
 
GTHeart