An Organ Donor No More
I have one goal for the next 20 days: Stay out of hospitals and keep breathing.
Once my new Virginia driver’s license arrives - without the little red heart that was on my old one - I’ll relax.
No one can drag my almost-but-not-quite-dead body into an operating room to remove my organs while my family are in the hall screaming: “She didn’t want to be an organ donor. That was on her license by mistake!”
For many years I WAS an organ donor. Never gave it much thought. It seemed like the right thing to do.
In 2022, however, I learned that desperately sick folks who hadn’t taken the covid vaccine - in Tidewater and elsewhere - were being systemically removed from transplant lists.
Oh, the organ snatchers were more than happy to “harvest” organs from the unvaxxed, but they wouldn’t give them to those who hadn’t taken the covid vaccine.
That’s when I decided to get off the list.
I renewed my license that year and when I did I checked the box that indicated I did NOT want to be an organ donor. It wasn’t until I got home that I saw the little red heart was still there.
Dang, I thought. No way I’m going back to sit for hours on a plastic chair at DMV to get that fixed. I’ll just tell my next of kin that I don’t want to be a donor. They always have the last word, I thought.
If there is a small red heart with the words “organ donor” at the bottom of your driver’s license, that puts you in a group of over 173 million Americans who are in state and national donor registries…
Is the decision legally binding?
If you are declared legally dead after testing shows no signs of neurological activity — known colloquially as being “brain-dead” — then the organ donor status on your license is legally binding, even if your family disagrees. In these cases, patients are kept on a ventilator until their organs are retrieved.
If a critically ill patient is in a coma and not expected to recover, then the family has to decide whether to withdraw life support. At that point, they can decide whether or not to donate the organs of someone who is not on the registry. If the patient was on the registry, then in most states, the family cannot override that decision.
Lemme get this straight: If you’re not on the donor registry your family can decide to donate your organs. But if you’re on it, they can’t opt out.
That’s ludicrous.
They really are desperate for our innards, aren’t they?
Not surprising when you consider that organ transplants are big business. A heart transplant costs about $1.3 million, a liver runs about $1.1 million, double lung transplants costs about $850, 000 and a pancreas is about $600,000.
A front page story in The Times should give all prospective donors - no matter how altruistic - pause. Headlined, “A Push for More Organ Transplants Is Putting Donors at Risk: People across the United States have endured rushed or premature attempts to remove their organs. Some were gasping, crying or showing other signs of life.”
In short, it’s a horror.
There is the case of Misty Hawkins, 42, who last spring fell into a coma after choking on a peanut butter sandwich. Her mother decided to take her off of life support and after more than an hour Misty was declared dead.
But she wasn’t. After the doctors “sawed through her breastbone” they saw her beating heart. Notes from the surgical unit documented that she was gasping.
Presumably, no anesthetic was involved as the doctors thought Misty was dead.
They quickly stitched the patient up, allowed her to die and told her mother Misty’s organs weren’t suitable for transplant.
This is the stuff of Stephen King novels.
Sadly, it’s not that rare.
The Times found that some organ procurement organizations — the nonprofits in each state that have federal contracts to coordinate transplants — are aggressively pursuing circulatory death donors and pushing families and doctors toward surgery. Hospitals are responsible for patients up to the moment of death, but some are allowing procurement organizations to influence treatment decisions.
Fifty-five medical workers in 19 states told The Times they had witnessed at least one disturbing case of donation after circulatory death.
Workers in several states said they had seen coordinators persuading hospital clinicians to administer morphine, propofol and other drugs to hasten the death of potential donors.
The article outlines the ghoulish eagerness with which emotionally wrecked families are pressured to remove life support and prepare their loved ones for donation.
The Department of Health and Human Services released an alarming report this week citing many concerns about organ harvesting. It was sparked by the 2021 case of a Kentucky man who had overdosed and was being prepared for donation. He reportedly drew his legs up, started crying and shaking his head NO!
That man eventually left the hospital and is alive today.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy said his department was going to reform the organ donation system from what appear to be rampant abuses and a “systemic disregard for the sanctity of life.”
“This is horrifying,” Kennedy said in a statement. “The organ procurement organizations that coordinate access to transplants will be held accountable. The entire system must be fixed to ensure that every potential donor’s life is treated with the sanctity it deserves.”
For the record, I am no longer a potential organ donor. And yes, I realize that many folks are alive today because of a donor. Fact is, the system as is not only unfair, it’s dangerous.
I’m out.
We agree to be organ donors to give life to others AFTER we’re dead. Not while we’re alive and breathing.
I went online today to the Virginia DMV and changed my donor status and requested a new driver’s license. The change cost $20.
Virginia is mailing me my new license - without the little red heart this time - and it should arrive in 20 days.
In the meantime, I’m driving carefully and chewing carefully.
