"I am so sorry for your loss. I need to ask, did your mom/husband/child ever discuss organ donation with you?"

This question makes me feel like the worst nurse ever. Since moving to OB, thankfully it isn't a question I need to ask anymore. Yet after working 13 years on Acute Care it is a question I'm familiar with. Until that point I've done everything in my power to either preserve that life, or at least to help death be a calm, pain free transition. In asking that question now, I'm not only acknowledging that there is nothing left to be done, but I'm asking permission to allow a doctor to harvest organs from their mother, spouse, or child.

In my job, this is the portion of organ donation I dealt with. Personally though, I've experienced the other end of organ donation. The waiting, the constant presence of the beeper, and the hope. The hope that a grieving family will, in their grief and heartache, will make the choice to donate the organs of their family. Signing the back of your driver's license isn't enough, those left behind must give consent.

Over the years, organ donation has been a very personal issue for me. Since the age of 7 one of my dear friends Pam, lived with the diagnosis of "Idiopathic Pulmonary Hemosiderosis". Essentially this meant the capillaries in her lungs collapsed and bled, resulting in scar tissue and decreased lung capacity. In 1991 Pam was a freshman in college. As her health began to decline rapidly, she was placed on oxygen 24 hours a day, delivered by a tracheostomy tube in her throat. Soon her doctors decided the scar tissue was growing to great to allow her lungs to provide her body with the oxygenation she needed. She needed a double lung transplant or she would die. Pam was troubled about the transplant she needed. It hurt her to think that someone would have to lose their life in order for her own to be saved. However she knew organ donation was the only thing that could enable her not only to live, but to full fill her dream of becoming an art teacher, a missionary, a mother. I vividly remember her excitement after meeting with transplant recipients at the destination hospital. "Daneen, one woman there ran a marathon six months after her surgery! Can't you just see me running a marathon!?" At that point Pam wasn't even able to walk across her college campus. If there was walking to be done, her friends and family carried her.

Pam was placed on the organ donor list, her family immediately launched a full scale fund raiser to generate money for the cost of the operation. In Pam's own words "Being on the list, and waiting for the transplant is so important . . . It gives me hope. Even if I don't get it in time, It's important. Otherwise I'm just sitting around, waiting to die, and that's no way to live."

Through those short 19 years, Pam had experienced great pain, suffering and the knowledge that her time may be shorter than it should be. However she also experienced happiness, laughter, and joy. Which she brought to those who knew her. She carried herself with the dignity and sense of self you might expect from someone much older.

Sadly, Pam died before a transplant was available. She knew her time was near, yet through her strong faith, she was ready. She left his world without fear, and with the knowledge that even in death, she was reaching out to help others. You see before her death, Pam together with her family, made the decision to donate what organs she could to others in need. Pam's selfless choice to donate her own organs gave someone else the greatest gift possible.

Now, years later, I found myself confronted with the agonizing wait again. As I type this, the boy's grandfather is waiting for a liver transplant. "Grandpa Larry" is actually my husband's ex-father in law. However he and his wife (Grandma Pam, oddly enough) have been right there for my own boys as Grandma and Grandpa. Having lost my own dad before the boys were even born, and my mom when they were so young, I can't help but feel they have been cheated a little. Having Grandma Pam and Grandpa Larry has made up for that in a small way. Grandpa Larry and Goofy are the best of buddies, Monkey cheerfully yells "Hi Geepa!" upon first sight. Grandpa comes to all events such as birthday parties and soccer games, and has included my boys (and myself) as part of the family.

Larry became ill in a matter of months after his early retirement. This time that should have been spent enjoying family, hobbies, and life in general has been spent instead at doctors appointments, hospitals, and of course playing the waiting game. Waiting for the beeper to signal that a new chance at life has arrived. As recently as a few days ago, we thought the time had finally come. After a whirlwind trip to Omaha, pre surgery testing and prep, it was discovered that the donor liver wasn't usable. I cannot imagine the emotional roller coaster that would be for the patient, but also for the parent, the spouse, the child of those who wait.

I was never close with my grandparents, and it means so much to me that Goofy and Monkey have such a close relationship with not only Mr. Honeybell's parents, but these "self appointed" grandparents as well. I want Monkey to know and remember this grandpa, who in a way reminds me of my own dad. Organ donation is the only way this will happen.

Find out more about becoming a donor here, or here (links to donor sites will be here). As you consider becoming an organ donor, don't let signing your driving license or registering online be the end of it. Talk to your family. Ask your family what they think, what they would want. Ask that they honor your wishes to be an organ donor when the time comes. Not only will you ensure that your wishes are honored, but it will make the choice for yourself or for your loved ones so much easier at a most difficult time.

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