Community

I have been very impressed by how willing our community has been to help raise awareness about Organ and Tissue Donation. I’d just like to mention some of the things our community has done to help save lives through organ and tissue donation.

• The mayor declared April our city’s Organ, Tissue and Eye Donation Awareness month.
• The local TV network broad-casted the mayor’s declaration on the local news and is running a Donate Life TV ad all the month of April.
• The Plasma Center is running an Organ and Tissue Donation information video in their waiting room all the month of April. The college is also showing the video to those who come to donate blood during their blood drive.
• The High School allowed us to put on an assembly.
• The city put a Donate Life banner, a flag and a billboard on Main Street.
• Many people in the community who have had first hand experiences with this issue have been willing to share their experiences.

I think these are incredible things. We live in a great community.

I Heart Organ Donation

Serving on this committee to help raise awareness about organ and tissue donation has taught me quite a few things. One of those things is how Organ and Tissue Donation works. From what I understand ,there is a National Donor Services Agency. The country is then divided up into regions. These regions also have their own Donor Services. For example, the Intermountain Donor Services is over our region which includes Utah, southeastern Idaho, and western Wyoming. Within this area are 2.7 million people, 79 hospitals, 4 transplant centers, over 270 people awaiting transplants, and a thousand more waiting for tissue donation. 

When a hospital has a case arise in which someone has passed away from brain death, they contact the Donor Services. Once death has been confirmed, the Donor Services harvest and place the organs. The organs are usually given to someone within the same region.

The National Donor Services has put together a campaign called Donate Life to help raise awareness for organ and tissue donation. The mission of the campaign is to register their state’s residents as organ/tissue donors in their state’s organ donor registry to help save these lives. It is important for people to sign up in their state’s organ donor registry so that their wishes are upheld. A person’s family is able to over rule their decision to be an organ and tissue donor if the person has only signed up to be a donor on their driver’s license. If the person has signed up to be part of their state’s donor registry, their wishes will be upheld no matter what. You are able to sign up online, over the phone or by mail. To get in contact your states donor registry visit http://www.organdonor.gov/donor/registry.shtm.    

I recently received a link to a bunch of video clips about organ and tissue donation put together by the Illinois Donate Life Campaign. You can check them out by visiting http://www.youtube.com/donatelifeillinois.

National Donate Life Month

April is National Donate Life Month. To help promote organ, tissue and eye donation the mayor of Rexburg, Shawn Larsen, declared April our cities organ, tissue and eye donation awareness month. The KPVI channel 6 news covered this declaration and interviewed my Dad to help tell the story. You can watch the new clip by clicking on the following link at

 http://www.kpvi.com/global/video/popup/pop_playerLaunch.asp?vt1=v&clipFormat=flv&clipId1=3610475&at1=News&h1=The Impact of Organ Donation

Assembly at the High School

  A couple of weeks ago our Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness Committee put together an assembly we presented at High School. Tyce and Chantelle spoke a little bit about what it has been like for our family to have Dad on the waiting list. A local woman, Pat, talked about her husband, Ron who received a heart transplant. Ron and Pat were able to meet their donor family. She talked a lot about the emotions of that meeting. Then a 13-year old girl, Ragen, also spoke. Ragen just received a lung transplant 6 months ago. She was very well spoken and was able to get the high school students really involved in the assembly. A woman named, Jenny, also attended the assembly. Jenny works for the Intermountain Donor Services and has had a liver and a kidney transplant. She has really helped our committee know how and where we can help. We were very impressed by how willing the faculty at the High School were to help us with our cause. 

These are a few things that touched me during the assembly: 

Pat said when they were waiting for a heart the doctors asked them if they were praying. Pat and Ron asked how you pray for someone else to die. The doctors told said to them, “You are not praying for someone else to die, you are praying that someone who is going to die because it is there time to go, will have been generous enough to have been an organ donor.”

 

Pat also said that hanging in the transplant center in Salt Lake is a sign that says, “Don’t take your organs to heaven with you. Heaven knows they don’t need them.”

 

Ragen said she was grateful for the chance to speak at the assembly today. She told about a friend of hers who need a transplant about the same time she did. Her friend receive a transplant, but had become so sick that she passed about a month after the transplant. Her story made me realize this whole thing is in the Lord’s hands.

 

Ragen mentioned that if every person who could be an organ and tissue donor would be one, there would be no waiting list at all.

 

Tyce and Chantelle did a great job speaking to your peers about a topic that is personal to them. I was proud to be their sister.    

 

I will always be blown away by the fact that one organ donor can save 9 lives, restore the sight of 2 people, and enhance the lives of up to 50 other people. That is over 60 lives that can be completely changed because of 1 person who made a decision to be generous after they were gone.