If You Have Two, Share: One Woman’s Simple Decision To Donate A Kidney
Cognocenti | Laurie Edwards
Scrub nurse Imelda Macatangay, center, assists in a surgery harvesting a healthy kidney from donor Tom Otten, at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, Friday, Dec. 4, 2009. Others are medical student June Chanyasulkit, right, and Dr. Lee Cummings, left, transplant surgery fellow. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)
It’s what we learned in kindergarten. If you have two of something and you only need one, share it,†said Barbara Thorp, my father’s living kidney donor.
Could saving a life really be as simple as that?
It was 24 hours post-transplant, and I’d just helped my father make the steady, miraculous walk down the hall from his inpatient room to Barbara’s.
I’d watched my father deteriorate for months; his muscles weakened, his complexion turned ashen. I could measure his life slipping away by the way he sounded when he answered the phone.
Now, Barbara’s kidney was already doing its job mightily â€" producing urine, restoring his complexion, giving him his voice back. The man we had nicknamed Lazarus because he overcame serious illnesses so many times would, for now, rise up again.
Nationally, more than 118,000 people currently await an organ transplant; nearly 100,000 of them are waiting for a kidney transplant. So far in 2013, nearly 1,400 living donor kidney transplants, also called altruistic donations, which typically yield better outcomes than deceased donor transplants, have occurred.
Could saving a life really be as simple as that?
It was 24 hours post-transplant, and I’d just helped my father make the steady, miraculous walk down the hall from his inpatient room to Barbara’s.
I’d watched my father deteriorate for months; his muscles weakened, his complexion turned ashen. I could measure his life slipping away by the way he sounded when he answered the phone.
Now, Barbara’s kidney was already doing its job mightily â€" producing urine, restoring his complexion, giving him his voice back. The man we had nicknamed Lazarus because he overcame serious illnesses so many times would, for now, rise up again.
Nationally, more than 118,000 people currently await an organ transplant; nearly 100,000 of them are waiting for a kidney transplant. So far in 2013, nearly 1,400 living donor kidney transplants, also called altruistic donations, which typically yield better outcomes than deceased donor transplants, have occurred.
______________________________________________________
"You have the power to SAVE lives."
To register as a donor TODAY
In California:
www.donateLIFEcalifornia.org | www.doneVIDAcalifornia.org
Outside California:
www.organdonor.gov | www.donatelife.net
Comments
Post a Comment