Friday, June 13, 2014

Organ Donation

Good Morning!  Just wanted to type a real quick post about organ donation.  This is a topic near and dear to my heart.  My dad is in End Stage Renal Disease and is in need of a Kidney Transplant.  He is on the list and they said it could take up to 5 years for a match to be found.  We are in the process of seeing if I am a match for a live donation (which is best), but being his daughter does not guarantee that we are a tissue match.  They have a "donation chain", where they take a group of live donors and their family/friend that they are donating to, but can't because of tissue typing, and try to match them to other recipients.  If they can find a "crossmatch" between a group of people, they do a mass transplant session on the same day.  I don't know if this makes any sense, so here's a quote from the Alliance for Paired Donation:

"The Alliance for Paired Donation can help. Kidney paired donation matches one incompatible donor/recipient pair to another pair in the same situation, so that the donor of the first pair gives to the recipient of the second, and vice versa. In other words, the two pairs swap kidneys . APD has also pioneered a new way of using altruistic, or good Samaritan, donors, so that the transplants no longer have to be performed simultaneously. Non-simultaneous Extended Altruistic Donor Chains (NEAD Chains ) allow donors to “pay it forward” after their loved one receives a transplant."

You can check out their website here for more information.  

Please Please Please, if you are not an organ donor, become one!  You won't need the organs once you are deceased - seriously.  Think of all of the lives YOU could save with your organs - lungs, eyes, kidneys, liver, heart.  There are so many people waiting for organs, from newborns to parents, and grandparents.  All you need to do is check a box on your drivers license to save lives - it's that easy!!  If you don't want to donate certain organs - that's fine too!  Just make sure your wishes are known to your family - they can make them known if the time comes.  

I have two Kidneys and only one Dad, the choice for me is easy - put yourself in that situation with anyone you love, What would you do?

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