Altuistic Organ Donation
Altruistic Organ Donation
“I lay beneath the white sheets in anticipation for the potential surgery I am about to undergo. As the anesthetist wheels me to the prep room, I am swept behind the surgical room doors. ‘Am I doing the right thing? Will I be okay?’ All of these questions and more bombard my mind as the darkness begins to slowly eat away at my vision. With the last visages of light I had found comfort ‘I am doing the right thing, I’m saving a life’. I become overwhelmed by the darkness and fall into a blissful, dreamless sleep soothed by the rhythmic beeps of the hospital equipment.” (Ogilvie). These are the collective thoughts of the 100 or so people throughout the U.S. who will donate organs to a complete stranger. People such as John Cooper, who decided to donate a part of his liver to a stranger his wife, Deb Cooper, heard on the radio telling his tragic theory about having a liver disease and needing a liver transplant to live. John had made a decision he would donate a part of his liver to this complete stranger. The road to becoming a donor however, is not so simple as just to do it.
John had endured various strenuous mental and physical tests. He had to travel 8 times to Toronto to see experts in all fields relating to his donation. He saw a liver expert, a transplant coordinator, two transplant surgeons, a family physician, an anesthetist, a psychiatrist and a social worker. He completed innumerable forms, took a stress test, gave more than a dozen vials of blood and had his abdomen screened from every possible angle by CT scan and ultrasound. After all of these tests it was concluded that John was not an adequate match for the radio stranger though he was still elgible to be a donor. He decided to proceed anyway, “After you get involved, how can you say yes to one person and no to another?”(Ogilvie) His wife said. The Cooper’s were not strangers to being the victim of this type of situation. How would they fill if a possible donor of
“I lay beneath the white sheets in anticipation for the potential surgery I am about to undergo. As the anesthetist wheels me to the prep room, I am swept behind the surgical room doors. ‘Am I doing the right thing? Will I be okay?’ All of these questions and more bombard my mind as the darkness begins to slowly eat away at my vision. With the last visages of light I had found comfort ‘I am doing the right thing, I’m saving a life’. I become overwhelmed by the darkness and fall into a blissful, dreamless sleep soothed by the rhythmic beeps of the hospital equipment.” (Ogilvie). These are the collective thoughts of the 100 or so people throughout the U.S. who will donate organs to a complete stranger. People such as John Cooper, who decided to donate a part of his liver to a stranger his wife, Deb Cooper, heard on the radio telling his tragic theory about having a liver disease and needing a liver transplant to live. John had made a decision he would donate a part of his liver to this complete stranger. The road to becoming a donor however, is not so simple as just to do it.
John had endured various strenuous mental and physical tests. He had to travel 8 times to Toronto to see experts in all fields relating to his donation. He saw a liver expert, a transplant coordinator, two transplant surgeons, a family physician, an anesthetist, a psychiatrist and a social worker. He completed innumerable forms, took a stress test, gave more than a dozen vials of blood and had his abdomen screened from every possible angle by CT scan and ultrasound. After all of these tests it was concluded that John was not an adequate match for the radio stranger though he was still elgible to be a donor. He decided to proceed anyway, “After you get involved, how can you say yes to one person and no to another?”(Ogilvie) His wife said. The Cooper’s were not strangers to being the victim of this type of situation. How would they fill if a possible donor of
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