to ask your thoughts on organ denation

[UnicornShapedCloud]

I have been thinking alot recently about organ donation after watching a programme about it.

I have really mixed feelings about it,

Whats your views on donating your own or your DC organs after death?

@Teateaandmoretea I know - I've said the process should be better supported to assist families. But the nature of organ donation requires the decision to be made very quickly. It just isn't right that a person should die because a family aren't thinking clearly in the moment. If a dead person consented while alive to donate their organs, the family's feelings shouldn't be able to change that.

People die waiting for donors all the time. Grieving families should be supported and respected and helped to come to terms with the death, but they shouldn't be able to sign another person's death warrant on the basis that organ donation makes their grief a little worse. I'm sorry but a person's life just is more important than another person's grief, however harsh that sounds.

Apart from my corneas you can have anything

Organ donation should be opt-out, and the family of the deceased should have no rights of any kind to go against the wishes of their family member.

You would put me in the position of having to choose to go against my belief in organ donation, or living with the knowledge that my choice to be a donor would be catastrophic for my ds? What on earth has happened to the compassion you displayed in earlier posts?

As things stand he would try to support my wishes, but knows I understand that he may not be able to...he already has ptsd, your suggestion would just harm both of us.

California. You have absolutely no idea. It cannot be made easier for relatives, the nurses are amazing and do everything they can already. But you have someone in ITU who is dead/ is going to die that was healthy the day before that is not less distressing than being on a waiting list.

The argument that you shouldn’t be allowed to receive if you wouldn’t donate is idiotic anyway.

The reality is that if you are in a position where you are likely to need an organ you wouldn’t be in a position to donate anyway. And you are far, far more likely to need a transplant than to be in a position to donate.

And yes, the arguments about IVF/sport are exactly the same. Assuming the embrio’s have already been produced you won’t be needing them, so they should be donated to a childless couple who cannot produce their own embrio’s for whatever reason. If not you should be prevented from having children on the NHS? No? Didn’t think so.

And the moral arguments start to go down very slippery slopes once you start allowing treatment based on how someone has lived their life/the decisions they have made. What if, for instance, someone has been declared dead, suitable for organ donation and their lifestyle has been such that they have been unable to donate? Should their family then become ineligible because they didn’t donate what could have been perfectly viable organs if they hadn’t drank/smoked/done drugs etc?

And what about the young woman on that programme on Monday night whose other organs were so badly damaged due to her heart failure that in truth a heart transplant was completely futile? Should it be argued that she shouldn’t have been eligible and that that heart went to waste? How would the family of the donor felt I wonder, knowing that they made the selfless decision to donate a heart to a person who in truth was very likely to survive even the surgery?

This is far from black and white.

You are fucking clueless, California. That's fine, but you're insulting, too. That's not.

@Teateaandmoretea I'm not talking about being on a waiting list - I'm talking about a person dying because another person went against the wishes of their family member and prevented their organs being donated. I don't think that the family member's wishes should trump another person's ability to live.

@Andro I don't think I am the one lacking in compassion when you seem to be suggesting that a person should be allowed to die because your son doesn't want you to donate your organs. I haven't said anything in previous posts to contradict this. I think that the family members of organ donors should be given every support - it sounds like the process is currently distressing and traumatic and I think that could be hugely mitigated. But I don't think the family members of an organ donor should be allowed to go against the wishes of the deceased. I believe every person has a right to decide what happens to their own body, and it is the ultimate disrespect and selfish act for a family member to contravene that decision.

expatinscotland

There are times when this forum really needs a 'like' button

And a person not donating his/her organs is in no way 'signing someone else's death warrant' or 'allowing someone else to die'. How fucking dare you compare that to murder. That's shocking.

If any part of your body could save one life then surely there is no argument? Do it!

@expatinscotland where was I insulting?

@expatinscotland you haven't read the post properly. We are discussing a family member going against the wishes of the deceased and preventing them from donating organs when the deceased person expressed their wish while living that their organs be donated.

I'm very very pro organ donation. I always have been. I now have a 14 year old son who needs a kidney but fortunately he has more than one living donor match so he doesn't have to go on the waiting list. My body will be of no use to me when I die so whatever bits that can be used to help someone else should be.

The whole process is traumatic on all sides. For instance, the window of time for a DCD transplant is really narrow, so they often have to get a potential match lined up between the prospective donor and the prospective recipient before they know for certain if the donor is going to be able to donate. Because the organ transplant system is a national system, for fairness and transparency, the donor could be hundreds of miles away from the recipient. Waiting to hear if they are going to get their life-saving operation. Meanwhile, in some cases, the patient can only donate if they meet certain time-limited criteria. The nurses, doctors and relatives can be literally watching a clock, seeing it tick by, and when it reaches a certain point, a phone call is made to say that x,y,z organs are now unable to be donated, but the relatives would still like to donate a,b,c. Or a blood test result may rule out the lungs, or the patient may be too tall for lungs to be viable, etc. That can be heart-wrenching, both for the family of the patient, who by now are holding on to donation as their positive ending, and the patient somewhere in the country who is sat in a hospital, NBM, waiting for news that surgery will go ahead.

'I think that the family members of organ donors should be given every support - it sounds like the process is currently distressing and traumatic and I think that could be hugely mitigated. '

You are seriously without a clue. Actually, Andro, I wish the forum also had a 'get back in your box' button, and I say this as one who is registered to donate everything that can be useful, even corneas - long bone, skin, whatever.

Thank you expat you put it much more eloquently than me, thank-you.

@expatinscotland I'm honestly struggling to see what your problem is here. Do you disagree with the people who have said the process is traumatic? Do you think hospitals shouldn't be doing more to support families and ensure that they are treated compassionately and respectfully? I honestly don't know what your issue is.

'@expatinscotland you haven't read the post properly. '

Yes, yes, I have California. You're talking about something you have zero understanding of and making extremely judgemental statements about bereaved people, using language pretty much likening such people to murderers - 'signing someone's death warrant' 'allowing someone to die'. That's not on. It really isn't.

Agree that talking about a potential recipiant being on death row or signing someone’s death warrant is beyond the pale.

People also die from bereavement. I knew two women who did just that. Their child bereavement killed them.

@expatinscotland I was referring to your specific misunderstanding where you thought we were discussing organ donors where we were actually discussing the families of organ donors.

Families shouldn't get to override the decision made by the deceased while they were alive. It isn't right when other lives hang in the balance. Many people die waiting for donors who might have been saved had the wishes of deceased people been respected by their families.

Haven't RTFT so I'm sure it's been mentioned, but I think organ donation should be 'opt out' rather than 'opt in'

My husband SB and died three weeks ago - we made the decision to donate his organs. They used his heart and his kidneys for three transplant patients - it’s nice to know he could help out in that way.

And WRT the window of opportunity there are never any guarantees.

On Monday night’s programme they took a man down to theatre and anesthetised him in preparation for a heart transplant. And then the heart arrested inside the donor making it immediately non viable. They had to wake. Him up and tel him that the donation wouldn’t be happening, and at the end of the programme he had been on the list for four years.

But nobody else is or should be held responsible for that.

CaliforniaDream

Oh wonderful, so now my ds is (potentially) selfish and disrespectful because the MH condition the transplant coordination team helped cause (by screwing up so badly most of them lost their jobs and some their ability to practice) might well make it impossible to adhere to my wishes without having a violent ptsd episode and/or a complete breakdown?

I think I need to step away from this thread.