Organ Donation: A Selfless Way To Save Lives

"What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal." -Albert Pike. The act of giving can be defined in many terms; one of them is organ donations. Organ donation is a selfless way to give back to others, to help save lives even when you're gone and to be able to make a huge difference by giving another person a second chance at life. Almost everyone would want to be able to say “I have saved a life.” But by becoming an organ donor, as I really wish to, you can be able to say “I will save a life.” The number of patients waiting for organs is almost ten times the number of people who are registered as organ donors. Patients are forced to wait months, and even years for a match,

Organ donation is the taking of healthy organs and tissues from one person and transplanting it into another. Organ donations mostly occur for patients with kidney failure, heart disease, lung disease, and problems of the liver. For patients who need a kidney or a liver, a living donor’s organs can be used. Since humans are already born with two kidneys, one can be taken for a transplant and the person can easily live with the remaining other. It's almost the same for the liver; because it's regenerative and grows back if a piece is to be taken from it. However, if the patient needs a heart, lung, or a pancreas, the organ needs to come from a deceased donor. If the patient consents to an organ transplant, doctors put the patient’s name on a list by the United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS. UNOS has a database with all transplant patients waiting for organs and information on all organ transplant centers. Their board of directors have strict policies that decide who will get which organs. Most acceptable donors are those who are brain dead but are still on life support which means their organs are still viable. A match is declared when both the donor and the recipient have the same blood and tissue type, and other medical factors are considered depending on the specific needs for each case. Also, how long a patient has

Some of the many myths heard about becoming an organ donor is when someone says that if they agree to donate their organs and are admitted to a hospital for any reason the medical staff won’t work as hard to save their life but what they don't know for a fact is that when a person goes to hospitals for treatment, doctors focus on saving their lives, not someone else’s, and the doctor in charge of their care has nothing to do with transplantation just like how doctor's don't have the social gene for discrimination when in fact they only care for the soul in front of them. Others may excuse themselves as being too old. Medically there is no defined age for donating organs, and there have been many successful organ donations from donors in their 70's and 80's. Fearful people think they may be still alive when they're medically declared dead and their death certificate has been signed. Actually, people who donate their organs undergo many tests by doctors until they determine that the patient is truly dead, and then they start the organ donation