****** Please take care before reading. Speaking of Death *****************





I've been an organ donor for years. I'll tell the story about how something I'd never considered alot gave me the awareness to make this decision.

My daughter's little 15 yr old friend was given an additional three years to make it to her 18th b'day through donations of liver and kidney. She was able to drive her first car, and go to homecoming, graduate high school. She lost her fight and would've lived much longer with her donated liver had her kidneys not failed. She had a kidney transplant, but her body had already been through so much. She asked us all to donate considering she lived so much longer to do things she'd dreamed of and we might be able to do that for another. We all agreed. This was very hard on my little girl, and I became a donor from that moment on.

There are more that we can donate outside of organs, I believe (i.e. skin). They have even performed the third successful hand replacement surgery.

Regarding someone not old enough or who hasn't marked it, they'll ask the next of kin. My father hadn't marked it on his license and 30 mins after his passing I recieved a call from someone asking permission to remove his corneas. I was stunned, and felt a number of things, but agreed. With children, I believe they do the same...asking the next of kin (parent, guardian, etc.)

The gifts given to Theresa, allowed us more time with the that precious soul on this earth. Moreover, it gave the parents of an only child more time with their baby. My daughter stayed with her night and day at home as she declined then was with her up until her passing. I was there for my daughter. She was in the same hospital where she had the transplant surgeries and I remember her mother and father asking everyone there to become donors if they weren't as they showed the pictures of her in her first car, with her horse, at Homecoming, her first ride in a plane with her best friend to Colorado (alone! how exciting at 16!), her graduation from high school with a standing ovation and not a dry eye in the house, etc...explaining that those pictures representing that beautiful child wouldn't have been there without organ donations...

KD