Having a brain dead patient on the unit is hard. We had one yesterday. Asking about organ donation is the hardest question to ask. It never gets easier.
Make it easier for your loved ones. Tell your family if you want to donate. Having the card isn't enough, your family can still say no. You have to tell them you'll come back and haunt them if they say no..
Actually there is no IF here
You don't need your body when you're dead - but someone else does.
Following a harvesting, we get letters from the transplant team, telling us what organs got donated, who they went to and how they are doing. It makes us feel good and I can only imagine how much comfort it gives the family of the deceased.
Yesterday's family said yes. We were awash with surgeons from all over the country and people waiting for that call got it.
Today, there's a family grieving, but there's also several families sitting at the bedsides of their loved ones after their life saving surgery.
Serious post over. I'm sure smut will follow soon
5 comments:
I didn't know that the family can trump what the card said, I always thought the card alone was enough. I wonder if it's true over here, too. Guess we'd better sit down and have some sobering discussions-- along with arranging things like wills and obtaining life insurance...
My mum works in the hospital (note American use of "the"), and she's well aware of my desire to give my fantastic breasts to science (which is stated on my identification card). She also wants to be donated to science, strangely enough also for her breasts. She had silicone breast implants done in the early 80s and they've since leaked, and she wants to be part of a study of the long-term effects.
Kidding aside, it's terribly important. Don't feel the need to be smutty all the time, we already assume you are. Well, online anyway.
I am all for donating organs. Monica (chihuahualover) had to do a presentation about this a few months ago and I helped her put an idea together. You know (at least in the states) we have this program called "DARE". Its made by the police I think to make kids aware of drugs.
Well DARE hosts this week long "drug free" thing. Kids wear these plastic red wrist bands (like the ones you would get at a hospital when you are checked in) and the cops would talk to them.
I came up with an idea that we should do the same thing...but for high school kids (since they just get their liscence). Do a week long thing...and show them the benifits of donating their organs.
I know in my highschool...we had a day where the student counsil would show us the affects of drunk driving. It was like...every hour four people die from an alchol related accident. So the student counsil kids would dress up all in black...paint their faces white...then lay down in the middle of the school when classes changed. This was to represent the amount of people who died. The pile of people would increase with each period.
During the day...the people who were in the pile...couldnt take. Since they were "dead". I said...we should do that with the organ donating thing as well. Show who dies with out a transplant...etc.
Great blog Lisa =).
Great post! I agree - it shouldn't have to be the job of hospital staff to beg organs from the families! I have told my family before, but will be sure to repeat it to Hubby. "So, when I'm dead, be sure they take everything useful!" That should be obvious - the dead won't be using their organs. I think there are still some conspiracy theorists who think if they're organ donors, hospitals won't try as hard to save them after an accident, or that their organs will be sold on the black market or something crazy like that. Though on second thought, I think I'll have them take me to a nice Catholic hospital if I get in an accident, rather than a big teaching and research hospital! I'll add that to my wallet card.
Honestly, its harder work doing the tests and paper work to prove brain death than it is to save them...
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