Organ donation is a big deal in the U.S. I believe that everyone should register to donate our organs for others. It is as simple as checking the organ donor box when you are renewing your driver’s license.  It’s a selfless act anyone can do when they’re alive. There is just one problem with organ donation now. There is a lack of donors, and I want to try to help the cause.

According to organdonor.com, it states that 17 people die each day waiting for an organ transplant, and another person is added to the waiting list every nine minutes. There are 105,921 people on the waiting list as of March of 2022. If the unthinkable happens and a person is fatally injured, that person is able to save around 8 lives and help out 75 more people if they can donate. 

The compassionate act of individuals who have, or possibly are going to, give the gift of life to another person is a selfless act of kindness that could never be repaid by the recipient. My personal experience is the kidney transplant that my father received and a donation that my mother gave to help him thrive to this day. Medical issues and complications from organ failure have drastically altered my father’s life approximately eleven years ago. I want to talk about my family’s personal experience with kidney and organ donation, and how it changed my parent’s life.

He was feeling sick all the time.  He had constant fatigue, lower extremities swelling up, could not go to the bathroom, and experienced a loss of appetite. This led to problems with regulating his blood pressure. This led to blacking out; two seizures occurred (one time in the dialysis chair).  He also had a blood infection and a couple of postponements of the kidney transplant.

 All of this changed on April 19, 2011 when my mother donated a kidney to my dad to save his life.

The way he looks at her. My dad says that she is his hero, and it changed his life dramatically. He tries to be extra careful not to harm himself in any way.

During the months of January through March, 2011, many medical issues were compounding by the week for my father. With many stays in local hospitals and emergency room visits happening often, he truly started to get thoughts in his head that he was not going to be coming out of this very well. Then, after the transplant surgery, when someone would ask my dad how he was doing, I remember how his answer would be “I’M DOING BETTER THAN I DESERVE!” People who have donated internal organs and other body parts, whether alive or not, perform an unselfish act compared to none other. The second chance for life has shown me that nothing should be taken for granted, especially when seeing how this worked out with my parents.