To really not understand why people do not join the organ donation register?

[3littlefrogs]

I have been registered since I passed my driving test nearly 40 years ago. If I am dead I won't need my organs. They could save someone else's child, wife, husband, sister, brother.

When a loved one has just died it could be unthinkable saying yes tto something which involves cutting their body open
Most of the time you won't be thinking in 'this could help other people' terms because you'd be grieving too much
Personally I can imagine just wanting to leave the body how it was without tampering with it before cremating the body. It would be a hard decision to make during such a horrible time, it would be hard to say yes to something like that for a lot of people

Also I think george best deserved another liver, he had a disease (alcoholism)

I am registered and carry the Donor Card. My friend had a heart replacement so it means a lot to me. I also put the link up on my fb once a year in the hope my friends will sign up. So far I know 4 have :)

I think you can't do much better with your own life than give it to others. Even if your life was completely useless you helping someone to live after you die is amazing.

Difficult, yes, but many do it. I think a lot of people actually take comfort in having helped others.

Nevertheless, if people will neither donate or accept I've no problem with that. But if people are willing to benefit from others making that difficult decision, I think they should be willing to make it too.

Should people not be allowed a blood transfusion if they won't donate blood (medical reasons excepted)? In the case of a massive shortage - which can happen - should someone get priority on a transfusion because of their blood donation record?

MsBella I'd be pretty hacked off if my family went against my wishes regarding organ donation. The decision was made, I made it years ago.

And I really don't see how 'tampering' with the body as you call it makes any difference if they're going to be cremated anyway.

By all means decide this for yourself but don't go against clearly expressed wishes.

MsBella - it is hard, brutally so. My DH had to make the decision wrt his Dsis, he knows it was the right thing to do (and her wish in that situation) but it kills him that in making that choice he made his nephew's grief far worse.

I am registered as is my oh. But our 3 children are not.
We have decided to wait for the children to turn 16, then they can decide themselves. I don't like the idea of donating somebody else's body parts.

I'm not sure that they do know you don't feel anything during the ops. You're brain 'dead', by some definition, but they don't know if you can feel pain. I read a Nature letter saying there needed to be more research in this area.

There are several tests which are done:

The pupils are fixed and do not respond to sharp changes in the intensity of incident light. (mesencephalon, II and III).
? There is no corneal reflex (pons, V and VII)
? The oculo-vestibular reflexes are absent. No eye movements are seen during or following the slow injection of at least 50mls
of ice cold water over one minute into each external auditory meatus in turn. Clear access to the tympanic membrane must be
established by direct inspection. (pons, VIII, III, IV, VI)
? Access to the above reflexes may be prevented on one or other side by local injury or disease but this does not invalidate
clinical testing. In the case of bilateral injury or disease, ancillary testing should be considered.
? No motor responses within the cranial nerve distribution can be elicited by adequate stimulation of any somatic area, e.g. by
supraorbital pressure and pressure applied to the nail bed of a finger (the latter may be contra-indicated by a spinal injury).
Care must be taken to distinguish central response from primitive spinally-mediated reflexes that can be ignored in this context.
? There is no cough reflex response to bronchial stimulation by a suction catheter placed down the trachea to the carina, or gag
response to stimulation of the posterior pharynx with a spatula (medulla, IX, X). (C&P from NHS organ donation article).

I can attest to this, I sat and watched the doctors carry out all these tests on my fiance when he died. He was on the Donor Register and to not honour his wishes would have been wrong of me. After all the tests had been carried out, he was kept on oxygen and then the tests started to ensure that he could donate his organs. I do know of one life extended through his donation.

After my daughter was born, I put myself on the Donor Register.

There are other things to think about aswell, there have been many cases where someone who got a donated organ took on personality traits of the donor, even people who have woke up with a different accent! It is said that every cell of our body is concious. Memory and traits aren't only stored in our brain

This thread has got me thinking

" there have been many cases where someone who got a donated organ took on personality traits of the donor"

No there haven't!

Well yes there have, its just a fact...

I find this tricky. I'm not on the register, but don't care if Dh chooses to donate my organs. I'll be dead. Dh wants to donate everything but his eyes, so I know his wishes and could go through with them. God forbid it was ever my DC....I don't think I could bear to be that selfless.

MsBella... I believe that was a FILM with Jane Seymour in it.

'Your' thread was YESTERDAY... today is a whole new day.

I haven't watched what ever film you're talking about but I know for a fact there have been these cases. Even people waking up with a new accent in the news! All our cells are concious it is believed

and just a few posts or so ago this was a nice thread about encouraging organ donation.

Not disagreeing with organ donation at all, just something to think about, very interesting and quite scary actually

This is on 4od atm - think this is what Bella is thinking about? I know it bothered my friend as she waited for a donor. However now she has had it she is not one of the 2% and so hasn't thought of it since. The people in the film don't seem to have been harmed because of it, it seems to be a partial thing, not an all invasive one, and a minute percentage of patients are reported to have experienced it.

If you can confirm you would rather die than suddenly like chillis then I am sure this docu would put you off...

www.channel4.com/programmes/transplanting-memories/4od#2932177
Forgot to link to prog!

Where's the evidence of this? Apart from your assertion that it's a fact?

Haven't watched that but probably will now!

SOD right off Mini - you tell THAT to my 82 year old Dad who is still working and paying tax I will give you his number then you can ring him up and tell him that if by next year he needs medical care you don't think his life is worth extending and why the fact that he is still fucking alive is beyond you. And while you are at it you can write him a cheque to pay back some of his tax and NI contributions which helped pay for the hospital you were born in and the school you went to, plus the money he put into the system to pay the pensions of your own grandparents and great grandparents.

Thats was nasty mean post and nothing to do with what we are discussing

You should be ashamed of yourself

That's right Mini - make 'em all into little biscuits......

I think organ DONATION is great, but I'd worry too much about a system where it was completely left with doctors to decide.

What we need are viable artificial organs. Even if everyone was on the organ donor list, surely with modern medicine increasingly able to save lots of people having accidents or illness where on death, donating organs might be an option, and if we improve road safety, the number of available organs will never increase to the amount needed.

I'd just worry that if "donating" were compulsory doctors might be tempted to make value judgements of one life over another.