Here’s why you should NOT be mad when great-great-grandma Sylvia dies and the Organ Transplant Network calls you not an hour afterwards.

When someone died in CCU, it used to be a “good idea” to call the California Transplant Network. If you intended to, and sort of forgot, oh well.

Now, however, it is the law! Whenever anyone in the hospital dies, for any reason, we have to call CTDN and report the death. There used to be age restrictions – it used to be a max age of 40 when the organ banks started out; then it was 76, but now it really depends on the overall health of the patient, and we have to call regardless.

It is also a law that nurses and even doctors are not to approach the family with the Organ Donation Question. If the family brings up organ donation, we can talk with them about it, but we aren’t allowed to initiate the conversation. This is because some families (NOT the majority, unfortunately) desperately want to donate the patient’s organs (usually due to the patient’s wishes, of course), but for one reason or another are denied. This can be heartbreaking in those cases, so the donor network prefers to screen the patients first.

Yet regardless of whether you’ve ever mentioned organ donation, and even if you’ve expressed that grandma did not want to donate her organs and in fact had an anti-organ donation shrine by her bed, if grandma is a candidate, you’ll most likely get a call from the Donor Network anyway. So even if you’ve told the nurse caring for your family member that you don’t think ya’ll wanna give up the goods, don’t be surprised if you get a call later asking about donation.

Even if someone is not eligible to donate organs for some reason, they can still donate tissue and corneas. I took care of a patient that donated his corneas. After the patient died, they came and extracted his entire eye. This is not something I recommend watching take place. It made the person seem almost less human… although his eyes were closed anyway. But it was eerie seeing empty sockets.

My point wasn’t exactly to gross you out with that. My point is to plug organ donation (oh yeah, and also to remind you why you shouldn’t be mad at the nurse when the Organ Bank comes callin’ – It’s the law!). There is a severe shortage of organs, and a huge number of people that need them. Most religions support donating and receiving organs. Even Jehovah’s Witnesses can consent to having their organs donated and may also receive organs as long as they are completely drained of blood (which, I believe, they are). It costs your family nothing, you can still have that open-casket funeral you’ve always wanted, and you’ll still be treated as aggressively as you would have been prior to death.

People who are brain dead (flat-line EEG) but not body-dead donate organs by going to the OR, where life support is withdrawn. Right after the heart stops, harvesting begins. If we get the Donor Network involved AFTER someone has died, they can’t take major organs, but they can still harvest corneas (we do “eye care” by putting saline and tiny ice bags over their eyes), skin, bone, and other tissues. These are used for skin and bone grafts, and the corneas obviously help people see again.

I once took care of a patient that was declared to be a candidate for organ donation. If I was thinking that some of our living patients were labor-intensive to care for, confirmed organ donors are MUCH more so. They automatically become 1:1 patients (1 RN, 1 patient), and someone from the organ bank comes to write a hundred orders. The RN then runs around crazy trying to order all the tests, draw blood, label and send the blood to various labs, give a ton of medications, do frequent vitals, prepare the patient for surgery, on and on. But when my unit received the letter from the organ bank stating that the patient’s heart went to a 47 year old dad, his kidney to a 66 year old grandmother, and his tissues to various burn victims, it gave me such an awesome feeling and I admired the patient and his family. Because of him, people were no longer tethered to oxygen tanks or hemodialysis machines. Wow.

Seriously, everyone… organ donation can be a pretty creepy thing to think about, but I promise that you won’t need them anymore. I know several people who have been recipients of major organs and they are living very full and active lives now. It’s a miraculous thing that we can do this.

The Organ Donation box/sticker/area of your driver’s license simply gives whoever is making decisions some guidance about what to do with your dead self. It doesn’t automatically sign you up… Your family has the last word, and if that word is “no,” then some mom, grandpa, or first grader has to wait even longer for that heart, kidney, or liver. So when you’re having the already uncomfortable and awkward discussion about living wills and advance directives, you might as well chat about this. For more info, common myth dispelling, and overall encouragement, visit CTDN if you live in California. For those of you not blessed with an abode in Cali, do a search for “[state] organ donation,” and you can get info for your state.

If nothing I’ve said here has convinced you to think about donating your organs, consider this: at least it will ensure that you will not buried alive! Just think – no need for silly contraptions! Rest in peace and all that :-)