Donation_For_Others

The members of Spare Parts 6, a relay team in this year's Vermont City Marathon, are running to raise awareness about organ donation. The team is part of the Transplant Donor Network, and it's the sixth year the network has had a team run the marathon They range in age from their mid-twenties to their mid-sixties. Their ranks include teachers, physicians, administrators and a former state commissioner.  Together, they make up the team Spare Parts 6 in this year’s Vermont City Marathon, and they are running for a cause: to raise awareness of organ and tissue donation throughout the state. The five relay members — Dr. Harry Chen, Dawn Bissonnette, Shaina Kaye, Dr. Bridgett Marroquin and Jean DeMaroney — are part of the Transplant Donor Network (TDN), which is affiliated with the University of Vermont Medical Center. Bissonnette and DeMaroney are transplant recipients. The team wears bright fluorescent yellow shirts with “Donate Life” emblazoned across the front, ...

Dario Franchitti, Taylor McLean, Tim Clauson and Scott Dixon at an autograph event for Driven2SaveLives. Photo: Jill Sheridan/IPB Organ donation has become a mission for racing families during this year’s Indianapolis 500 with a goal of increasing the number of registered donors – and through the process comes healing and hope. A Little Sister Taylor McLean was close to her brother Bryan Clauson. He was an organ donor. “Bryan was the best big brother, the most amazing person and to be able to honor him still even though he’s not here it’s been a dream come true, honestly,” says McLean. “It’s helped me grieve in ways I didn’t know were possible and get through some of the darkest days of my life.” McLean helped out at an Indiana Donor Network autograph session at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway earlier this month. Fans had to show proof that they are registered donors to get autographs from a few IndyCar drivers including Dario Franchitti and Scott Dixon. In Indian...

Lupus is a cruel autoimmune disease that can attack skin, joints and sometimes organs. The disease affects nearly five million people worldwide. It often leads to kidney failure and is a long process for those waiting for a donor. According to Sierra Donor Services, there are 117, 951 people in the U.S. waiting for a lifesaving organ transplant and the majority are in need of a kidney donation. 22 people die each day on the waiting list and 91-percent of the people are from minority or multiracial backgrounds. Sharon Stencel is a living donor nurse at the UC Davis Transplant Center. She said at her center alone there are over 1,200 people on the waiting list.  "A lot of people have the misunderstanding that you have to be a direct relative to be a good match,” Stencel said. She went into detail that relation is not of importance. Dr. Huang, a specialist at the center, said they are urging people from minority or mixed racial backgrounds to test to see if they ...

Fundraisers are planned for Brian Dahl, director of the Cayuga County Office of Emergency Services. Cayuga County legislators bowed their heads in a moment of silence Tuesday afternoon during their meeting at Emerson Park for Brian Dahl, director of the county's Office of Emergency Services. Dahl is in need of both a liver and kidney transplant and was admitted to Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester this past weekend. Dahl, who has served as an emergency responder for over three decades between the Throop Volunteer Fire Department and the county's emergency management office, has needed a liver transplant for the last four years. Deputy Director Niel Rivenburgh, who has worked with Dahl for about 10 years, said his office has been inundated with phone calls and emails from friends, colleagues and family members. Those calls, he said, are the only interruptions in the day-to-day activities of the office. Rivenburgh is taking the reins, but he briefs Dahl when a...

A.J. Reyes, right, talks with Mary Knauer prior to a graduation ceremony for Samuel Merritt University nursing program students in Oakland, Calif. on Friday, May 26, 2017. Knauer's son was killed in a motorcycle crash in 2010 and Reyes received his heart in an organ transplant. (Kristopher Skinner/Bay Area News Group) At 25, AJ Reyes was suffering from congestive heart failure and running out of time. Unless the Vallejo resident got another organ to replace his damaged one, his doctors told him he would be dead within five years. Reyes went on the California Transplant Donor Network waiting list and in November of 2010, he got the call that he had been praying for. A strong, healthy heart had become available. But his joy was clouded by the knowledge that the news meant another family’s nightmare. Justin Olivera, a 40-year-old man from Willows, a small rural town in Northern California, had just been killed in a motorcycle accident. Olivera was an organ donor, and his heart...

CHRIS DORST | Gazette-Mail photos Brett “Buzzy” Morgan, of Cross Lanes, visits with Julia Burgess of Suffolk, Virginia, after meeting her for the first time during a party at Coonskin Park Saturday marking the 10-year anniversary of his liver transplant. Burgess’s best friend, Devon Thornton of Norfolk, Virginia, was Morgan’s donor. Brett “Buzzy” Morgan and his family celebrated the tenth anniversary of his liver transplant Saturday with a special guest — the best friend of his donor. Morgan and Julia Burgess-Ballinger met for the first time during a celebration at Coonskin Park. They had corresponded for 10 years after the death of Burgess-Ballinger’s best friend and Morgan’s donor, Devon Thornton. “It’s just amazing the connection you have,” Morgan, 57, of Cross Lanes, said. “Obviously her best friend died, so it’s kind of mixed emotions. What was so wonderful for my family was devastating for hers.” Burgess-Ballinger, who traveled to the event from Suffolk, Virginia...

Science 2.0 | Robert Cooper Deciding who gets a lung transplant - and thereby who doesn’t - is not easy. Lungs can only be transplanted from people who are organ donors, who are brain dead, and who died in such a way that their organs remain intact. Problem is, there are not enough people marking the “organ donor” box on their driver’s license to give everyone on the transplant list a chance to live. The current lung allocation system was revamped in 2005 to try and make it more fair. Previously, your place in line was determined by how long you had been waiting. That system incentivized people to get on the list before they really needed a lung just to accumulate waiting time, and it essentially sentenced to death anyone whose lungs went downhill too quickly. The new system tries to optimize lung allocation by considering both how bad your lungs are and how much good a transplant is likely to do for you. This is meant to be more fair, but as long as more people need new ...

Donate Life America Tomorrow is the beginning of National Donor Sabbath, a time for people of all faiths to honor those who have given the lifesaving gift of organ, eye and tissue donation. To begin our celebration, we will share the story of Father Peter. When doctors delivered the grim diagnosis of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a lethal lung disease, to Father Peter, he wasn’t ready to give up on life. A Franciscan priest of more than 50 years, Father Peter had felt God calling him to serve since the age of 13, and he knew he still had work to do. His condition caused great difficulty with breathing and triggered coughing fits that rendered him unable to speak. “A priest who can’t say Mass is a priest who is not fulfilling his calling,” Father Peter remembers thinking before his lifesaving lung transplant. Today, thanks to the gift of an organ donor, he is back to spreading messages of hope to others â€" one of faith, and one of gratitude for donation and transplantatio...

Press Enterprise | Brian Rokos KURT MILLER/THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE Bernice Hobdy, grandmother of slain Riverside teen Lareanz Simmons, gets a hug from Alejandro Valenzuela, in center, who received Lareanz's kidney, at right is his wife Maria Valenzuela as they meet for the first time at Riverside Community Hospital on Thursday, November 21, 2013. Alejandro Valenzuela handed Bernice Hobdy a potted plant and a box of chocolates. The gifts were a small token of appreciation, Valenzuela said, considering what Hobdy’s grandson had given him: a second chance at life. Lareanz Simmons’ right kidney now lives inside of Valenzuela, who had waited 10 years for a transplant and had endured dialysis treatments three times a week. Hobdy and Valenzuela met for the first time Thursday, Nov. 21, at Riverside Community Hospital. That’s where on Feb. 23, 2012, Lareanz died after being gunned down near his home on Georgia Street in Riverside. Lareanz, whose slaying remains unsolved, was a 14-year-o...

Yahoo News | American Society of Transplantation AST President attends White House Oval Office ceremony to witness the historic signing of important organ transplant legislation WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Dr. Daniel Salomon, President of the American Society of Transplantation (AST), joined President Obama today at the White House as he signed S. 330, the HIV Organ Policy Equity Act. The legislation, which enjoyed bipartisan and bicameral support, seeks to expand the supply of life-saving organs available for transplantation to the more than 118,000 individuals currently on the organ waitlist. During the small Oval Office gathering, Dr. Salomon thanked President Obama and expressed AST's gratitude for the enactment of an important patient-focused bill that will make the gift-of-life a reality for more individuals awaiting a life-saving donor organ. The passage of the legislation was spearheaded by AST's longtime Director of Government Relations, Bill Applegate, in the Washi...

Channel 3000  MADISON, Wis. -  A national organ donation advocacy organization is weighing in on a decision to block a family from donating a child's organs last month. News 3 reported earlier this week that 5-year-old Brayden Turnbill's family was blocked by a Dane County assistant district attorney and a judge from donating his organs. Turnbill died on Oct. 24 at UW Hospital after being taken from his home with head and chest injuries that investigators said were from child abuse. Dane County Assistant District Attorney Tom Fallon asked Judge Peter Anderson for a restraining order in the case against the UW Hospital Organ Procurement Office. Prosecutors and the Dane County medical examiner argued that the body needed to remain completely intact to determine the cause and manner of death. Those court proceedings are sealed, but Anderson granted the restraining order, and Turnbill died that evening after life support was removed. Thursday, CEO of Donate Life America David Flem...

The Daily Pilot | John Whalen This time of year I wonder how I can ever really say thank you for the gift of life. I am alive because someone gave me his liver. It was this single act of kindness that saved my life on Feb. 27. Five years ago, my liver began to fail. I started having pain in my side and overall, I just didn't feel right. I went to many doctors who treated my symptoms, but I still never felt normal. I had low energy, and my mind was foggy. In January 2012, I started having back pains, and at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach, Dr. Jeanie Spudick diagnosed a serious blood infection. This blood infection spread to the nerves in my leg and into my spine. Soon I lost all strength in my left leg. Later, I found out that the blood infection had spread because of my liver disease. Four months later, I went into a hepatic coma for three days. I woke up in the hospital and was told I had hepatic encephalopathy. Dr. Spudick visited me in the hospital and recommended Dr. Donald Abr...

Tufts Now | Jacqueline Mitchell Photo: In June, not quite nine months after life-saving heart surgery, Shoji Inomata participated in the 11th annual Harbor Walk & Run, a 5K that raises money for Tufts Medical Center and the Floating Hospital for Children. Photo: Melody Ko  When this Tufts dental student learned he needed a transplant, his world changedâ€"but his determination to stay in school did not Shoji Inomata, D15, didn’t feel good. The second-year dental student was short of breath, and his heart was beating erratically. He knew something was very wrong. But when he walked into the emergency room at Tufts Medical Center in January 2012, he never imagined he’d be in the hospital for 256 days. Just 25 years old, with no history of cardiac problems, Inomata’s heart was failing. And after a seven-month wait for a donor, Inomata was one of 17 adults to undergo a heart transplant in 2012 at Tufts Medical Center, which performed more of these surgeries than any other hos...

KSTP TV Minneapolis St. Paul | Tom Durian Minnesotans are a generous group of people. According to the organ donor organization LifeSource, 62 percent of the state's residents are signed up to be donors. But, there are states higher on the list, and today hundreds of healthcare professionals met in hopes of moving the state up the list. LifeSource held its Donate Life Symposium, where nurses and doctors heard from the families of donors, and those whose lives were saved by organ donation. Mandy Bradley, 25, suffered from heart failure in 2012 and received a donated heart while waiting at the most critical of spots on the donor list, 1A. She now thanks the donor everyday "I am living a normal healthy life because of someone else and the decision they made." In addition to the stories of survival were the stories of families whose loved ones made the decision to donate. Continue reading   ______________________________________________________  "You have the power to SA...

Star-Tribune | Heather J. Carlson, Associated Press ROCHESTER, Minn. â€" At the age of 8, Christian Yang knew what he wanted to be when he grew up. "When I grow up, I want to be in law enforcement or a firefighter. I want to help people," Christian would tell his father, Tony Yang. Christian never got the chance to fulfill those career dreams. But the Rochester boy did help the lives of five people he never met. After Christian suffered a fatal brain aneurysm on Oct. 25, his parents made the decision to put him on life support for two additional days so that his heart valves, kidneys, liver and spleen could be donated to others. At his son's bedside, Tony Yang explained his decision to his youngest child. "While I was with him, I said to my son, 'I know I did not get a word from you about donating your organs, but I know in your lifetime you always put other people first and you always wanted to help other people.'" Every year, more than 100,000 peo...