BRIDGEPORT, W.Va. — Dr. Cindy Osborne, a Harrison County native and graduate of United Hospital Center’s Family Medicine Program, doesn’t think there’s ever a bad time to register as an organ donor.
She would know; nearly eight years after a life-saving heart transplant she’s trying to rally more West Virginians to register. But this registry is not one bathed in materialism like a wedding registry. Rather, it offers only one gift: the potential for life.
“My donor saved my life,” Osborne said. “I was very, very sick. Not, in my opinion, very far from dying. Genuinely saved my life, the young man who passed away.”
Dr. Osborne was diagnosed with an idiopathic cardiomyopathy from advanced congestive heart failure. As her symptoms worsened and her health deteriorated, a transplant become her only option.
That’s why she joined United Hospital Center staff and representatives from the Center for Organ Recovery and Education (C.O.R.E.) in honoring past donors and wrapping up National Donate Life Month by making another push to register new donors.
“There’s still a lot of false myths out there about religious questions and just concerns that you won’t look the same when you pass away,” she said.
That’s part of C.O.R.E.’s mission: better educate the public on what it really means when you put a check next to the organ donor box when renewing your drivers license.
“Honestly, few people that pass away are actually organ donors because of the specific criteria of head injury and actual brain death that the actual organs would need to be used,” Osborne said. “That’s why we need to get lots of people on the organ donation list.”
That list includes 117,000 people nationwide, and it continues to grow even though 22 people on that list die every day.
“It really is a supply and demand issue,” Christy Conley, C.O.R.E.’s Community Outreach Coordinator, said Friday. “A lot of people don’t realize that only about two percent of Americans die in such a way that they can actually be an organ donor.”
She said one of the most popular misconceptions, particularly among those aged 50 and up, is that an EMT, doctor, or nurse might decide not to try and save someone who’s organs can be of use elsewhere.
“EMT’s, doctors, and nurses typically do not know that you are an organ donor,” Conley said.
According to Conley, a registered organ donor must already have a brain declared medically dead while in a controlled setting like a hospital.
“And donor families will tell you that that is such a legacy for them and their loved ones to know that their loved one that they lost is still living on in someone else,” she said.
That’s why so few registered organ donors even qualify to actually be organ donors. The process doesn’t even begin until the previously described scenario occurs.
“We actually look at it as giving the gift of life,” Conley said. “One person can save up to eight people. It is an opportunity to leave a lasting legacy by saving someone else’s life.”
It’s a difficult process for any family, according to Dr. Osborne. First, a hospital would need to contact an organ procurement organization like C.O.R.E. to see if one of their registered patients who has met all the previous criteria is also a donor. Then there could be complications over the potential organ. Finally, if all other criteria is met, you need to get the organ to a hospital that undergoes transplants and get the patient to that hospital–sometimes hours away.
And, according to Dr. Osborne, that process only gets more complicated if a potential matching donor never registered or even expressed their end-of-life wishes to a family member or friend.
“[Families] would certainly be dealing with a difficult time in their life,” she said. “That way they would know your wishes.”
Conley estimates about 52 percent of Americans are registered as organ donors. In West Virginia, that number is closer to 35 percent.
“We are the most giving people that you will know here in West Virginia,” she said. “I think, how important is it that we give in our last days?”
Kristy Zink, UHC’s Director of Critical Care, said it never hurts to have additional information.
“I encourage everyone to go out and at least talk to a representative about becoming an organ donor,” Zink said.
And, she said, it’s an intentionally easy process. You can register while renewing a driver’s license or online at core.org.
Of those few who not only qualified, but also did wind up donating, their images were on display in the form of quilts made by the family members of donors. Hospital staff hung the quilts at UHC on Friday as a tribute to those who gave one last gift: the potential for life.
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