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?

I gave consent for tissue samples to be taken from my stillborn dd, but when it came to her organs, I just couldn't do it.

They could not have been donated as she was so prem, but I guess they could have been used in medical research that might have later saved lives.

I just kept thinking they would keep her heart in a dusty pickle jar in a lab somewhere.

And it didn't help that we were treated very shoddily by the specialist path lab. They were delayed in releasing dd's body and when my mum phoned up to ask what was happening as we wanted to organise the funeral, an assistant thought she had put my mum on hold when she hadn't and referred to her as "a batty woman on the phone". My mum heard everything.

It's a good job my mum called instead of me. Something like that may very well have broken me at the time.

“If you don’t donate organs you shouldn’t get any”. “You should have to give to receive”.

If you haven’t made the right level of national insurance contributions you shouldn’t get treatment. Or if you’ve only made half the level of contributions you’ll have to pay the other half for that operation or have a lower level of care.

No?

We do not live in a country where we ration medical care according to personal choices and/or limitations. Someone who can’t or doesn’t work and doesn’t make contributions is not denied treatment and that is completely right. Someone who doesn’t want to donate organs is fully entitled to the full level of medical treatment (including organ transplants) and that’s the way it should be.

Going down the road of “if you don’t contribute you can’t have” is very dangerous.

kinsey I think your post says it all. The fact that virtually everyone in this thread says they would donate both their own and a family member’s organ, yet so many actually don’t when it comes to crunch time, shows that at the most horrific moments things can and do change.

Going down the road of “if you don’t contribute you can’t have” is very dangerous

I think that those who propose this do so as a moral challenge rather than a legal requirement. Like "give your head wobble", or "think for a fucking minute"
Sort of thing.

Going down the road of “if you don’t contribute you can’t have” is very dangerous*

I just think that either you believe in organ donation or you don't. It is as simple as that.

I just think that either you believe in organ donation or you don't. It is as simple as that.

It isn't that simple though. I donated my son's organs through my own choice. That was hard enough. If I had been forced to make that decision because of a rule that says all or nothing I would have felt very differently about it.

Where would that stop anyway. Kids not getting transplants because their parents won't sign up? People being refused transplants because of a decision they made as a teen?

If there was a rule that cast a moral judgement on the potential recipient for any reason then my choice to donate my son's organs may have been different.

It is a gift.

This will sound soft but I ticked every box on my online donor form apart from heart and eyes,If there is any truth in reincarnation id like to see with my original eyes and love with my original heart

Errr....you do realise your heart is a muscle that pumps blood around your body yes? That it has nothing to do with your personality or who you love? That's the function of your amazing brain.

I've been on the register since I was a teenager. They can take whatever they want.

However, when DS was born and I had to register him at the doctors surgery I couldn't bring myself to opting in for him. I remember that new-mum 'haze' and looking at his perfect little tiny body, and I couldn't bring myself to tick that box.

Of course I would donate (now) if the worst should happen.

I do think there should be priority given to people who are donors over people that opt out. Not sure how that would be policed but I'd be livid if I was on the waiting list and someone that wasn't prepared to give be was prepared to receive, got an organ ahead of me.

I firmly believe priority should be medical need only.

Anything other than that is heading into very dodgy ground.

I believe (could be wrong) that it’s done based upon the likelihood of success?

"Why on earth would you not?"

The grieving process is very complex and in critical care it often begins long before the time of death. To consider organ donation can, for some relatives, feel that they are too accepting of their death, that they are not resisting it hard enough as a possibility, that if they were truly wanting them to live they wouldn't even be considering that as an option. It isn't about 'not being generous', at all. They are being asked to give away part of their loved one before it is even finished with - no matter how logical it is for us now, here, talking about it objectively, it isn't rational then.

I'm a registered organ donor, told my DH it's a free-for-all should I shuffle off this mortal coil in relative health. I don't need them any more, why not give them to someone who does?

They can have anything they want from me , Dh and our children....we have talked about it as a family and are all very clear

Personally I hate the idea of having someone else’s organ in my body
And I wouldn’t donate mine either
However I’m healthy Maybe my perspective would be different if I was gravely Ill

Absolutely I would. But I don't know whether that will happen, because dh says the idea of dontaing the organs of someone he loves upsets him and I haven't been able to talk him round. So if he outlives me, he may well veto my request, and my organs will go to waste. But perhaps he'll change his mind between now and then.

If he dies before me, I'll donate his organs if possible regardless of his expressed wishes to the contrary. I don't feel the need to tell him that now, however. Why upset him now? He and I both believe there's no afterlife, so I don't feel this amounts to any sort of betrayal. He won't be around to be bothered about it after he is dead.

I don't know what I'd do if, say, one of our children died and we had to agree between us whether to donate their organs. How hard would I push my pro-donation view in the face of his immediate grief? I imagine I would make a very brief gentle attempt to persuade him and then give way to him.

For those saying that family members shouldn't be able to override your decision, if you are on the organ donor register, then legally they do not have the right to refuse. However pragmatically nobody is going to whisk a donor away from grieving relatives who do not want this - this would be incredibly traumatic and I don't think many people would feel able to do this. This is the issue with an opt-out system; unless you are incredibly hard-headed, in reality the family's wishes will still be taken into account. Plus I think a number of people will opt-out on principle, further reducing the number of organs.

I'm sorry to hear some others have had bad experiences with insensitve professionals. We did also. Two years after my mum's death, her body having been used in the meantime for medical research or training medical students (which we were very glad to consent to), my poor sister received her ashes.

With no warning. In a cardboard box in the ordinary post. Sent to her last known address which for all they knew might now be occupied by strangers. WTAF.

Yes happy for anyone to have my organs when I'm gone . Remember being invited to join the donor register when I renewed my car tax online a few years back - well that's one source of donors for sure - kids are old enough to make their own decisions now but if I lost a small child and a part of them could help the suffering of another then I wouldn't hesitate

The grieving process is very complex and in critical care it often begins long before the time of death. To consider organ donation can, for some relatives, feel that they are too accepting of their death, that they are not resisting it hard enough as a possibility, that if they were truly wanting them to live they wouldn't even be considering that as an option

This is why the conversation and decision about organ donation should be had with family, friends and relatives when you are fit and well and healthy.

There’s a lot of ill informed nonsense in the links on this thread.

I will do my damndest for any patient who comes in through the doors and you will get whatever treatment you need whether you are a donor or not. I don’t withhold drugs (or give them unnecessarily) to save organs. Oddly enough, what keeps organs healthy (having enough oxygenated blood going through them at sufficient pressure) is also what keeps the rest of you alive.

And yes, you are given anaesthetic for some types of organ donation. If the heart has stopped (DCD as Lougle explained upthread) then kidneys can still be used and they can be removed without anaesthetic. In the same way, you don’t have an anaesthetic for a post mortem examination.

Where the patient is brain dead (also explained upthread) more organs can be used. The spinal reflexes are still intact however and parts of the autonomic nervous system are still functional. The brain - the bit that thinks and feels and makes you you - is never going to work again but the anaesthetic is given to block the spinal reflexes and autonomic effects from surgery. It is stopped when the heart and lungs are isolated and removed.

We don’t call it “organ harvesting”, we call it “organ retrieval”.

I have been the anaesthetist for several cases involving organ retrieval and the patients are treated with the utmost respect and care even though they are technically dead.

I will be donating what is left of me once I die if it can be used, and I’m going to be a live donor for my husband in the not too distant future. I see how hard our staff work on every patient that comes in and just because I’m a donor I don’t think they’d work any less hard on me.

Personally I hate the idea of having someone else’s organ in my body
And I wouldn’t donate mine either
However I’m healthy Maybe my perspective would be different if I was gravely Ill

I know two people who are alive because of organ transplants (heart and kidney respectively)

No one likes the idea of another person's organ in them

They don't want to be in a situation where they're facing death themselves

They don't want to be in a situation where the only way to save their life is to wait for someone else to die

But when the choice is 'die' or 'accept a donated organ', these feelings tend to be overruled by the desire to stay alive

I suspect you would indeed have a rather different perspective if you were in that situation. I hope you and your loved ones never are.

I would donate myself and DH. I would love to say I'd donate my DC but I know that would be lie.

We nearly lost DC3 when she was 2 I can't explain the feelings I felt at the time, I think the thought of her been cut open and pieces of her been removed may have tipped me over the edge and I don't think I'd of been able to do it. So while in theory saying yes I'd donate my DC bodies is easy to say doing it when your in such pain isn't that easy. Yes I would want my DC to receive a transplant

I am on the donor list and would hate for any of my family to go
against my wises. And with the same respect if a member of my family died and I knew they were catagorically against organ donation I would also honour their wishes regardless of the fact that they are dead.

I feel very strongly that I want to be cremated and not buried and if anyone went against that, well I would bloody haunt them. But just because I'm dead my wishes should still be respected and organ donation is the same.

Yes, I'm a donor. Take anything and everything they can! I don't know how much will be of use, I can't even donate blood because I have Crohn's so not sure if they will be able to take anything.

I have this printed out and folded up in my purse, for someone to see in case the worst happens, although family are all aware of my wishes (had a few close calls so it is something spoken about)

*At a certain moment a doctor will determine that my brain has ceased to function and that, for all intents and purposes, my life has stopped.

When that happens, do not attempt to instil artificial life into my body by the use of a machine. And don't call this my "deathbed." Call it my "bed of life," and let my body be taken from it to help others lead fuller lives.

Give my sight to a man who has never seen a sunrise, a baby's face or love in the eyes of a woman.

Give my heart to a person whose own heart has caused nothing but endless days of pain.

Give my blood to the teenager who has been pulled from the wreckage of his car, so that he might live to see his grandchildren play.

Give my kidneys to one who depends on a machine to exist from week to week.

Take my bones, every muscle, every fiber and nerve in my body and find a way to make a crippled child walk.

Explore every corner of my brain. Take my cells, if necessary, and let them grow so that someday a speechless boy will shout at the crack of a bat and a deaf girl will hear the sound of rain against her windows.

Burn what is left of me and scatter the ashes to the winds to help the flowers grow.

If you must bury something, let it be my faults, my weaknesses and all my prejudice against my fellow man.

Give my sins to the devil. Give my soul to God. If, by chance, you wish to remember me, do it with a kind deed or word to someone who needs you. If you do all I have asked, I will live forever.*