National Donate Life Month is the perfect time to stop and think about the gift of organ and tissue donation and peruse the real-life stories of the people it touches every day.
One man in St. Rockford, Illinois recently showed the boundless limits of human generosity by giving the ultimate gift of life: he decided to donate one of his kidneys to a cashier he hardly knew. Read their heartwarming story here.
Reminder: April is National Donate Life Month. It is a great time to reflect on the miracles made possible here at AlloSource thanks to generous donors and their courageous families. Because of their decisions to register as donors, each day we are able to save and enhance the lives of patients in need: providing allograft skin to patients who are severely burned, generating fresh articular cartilage allografts to promote joint restoration for patients who have suffered disease or trauma, processing live cellular bone growth substitutes for patients with broken bones or spinal fusions, and so much more.
Although still lesser understood than organ transplantation, approximately 1.5 million tissue transplants are performed each year. Celebrate this Donate Life Month by reading some of our touching stories of donor families and tissue recipients. Their chronicles truly bring to life the miraculous possibilities of tissue donation.
And please remember, if you’re not already a donor, register to become one. And pass the word on to your friends and families.
When helping was critical, the AlloSource team sprang into action.
AlloSource is one of the largest suppliers of allograft skin for burns in the nation. Burn skin is central to our mission and helps us play a part in saving people’s lives each and every day.
We service major medical centers in our core communities as well as in other communities across the nation and AlloSource is first to get the call when a crisis event happens. On January 26 we got the call again.
U.S. Air Force C-130 airplanes landed in Tampa, Florida last week with severely burned survivors of the Haitian earthquake inside. The patients were immediately transferred to Tampa General Hospital, one of our large allograft burn skin customers. The procurement coordinator at Tampa General was looking for all the skin that we could provide them to cope with their immediate and future needs. Tampa has implemented their disaster plan for burns and is now working around the clock on surgeries in the burn center.
Immediately the AlloSource team sprang into action releasing 55 square feet of skin. (more…)
Check out a few photos from the stunning float, featuring AlloSource’s float rider Manuel Salazar, a courageous quadruple amputee and tissue recipient.
For a third consecutive year, Donate Life was among the Rose Parade float award winners. This year’s “New Life Rises” entry won the prestigious Theme Trophy for Excellence in Presenting the Parade Theme, “A Cut Above The Rest.”
Additionally, ABC conducted a text-message poll allowing their millions of viewers to select their favorite float. The winner: Donate Life!
We are very proud to this year be sponsoring Manuel Salazar as a float rider in the 2010 Rose Bowl Parade aboard the Donate Life float. Manuel was rendered a quadruple amputee following a devastating construction site accident. Thanks to his incredible spirit and determination as well as allograft tissue transplants, Manuel now thrives as a quadruple amputee.
Julie Prangl has experienced the heartbreak, loss, hope and awe that come from being on both sides of organ and tissue donation. Her 17-year-old son became an organ and tissue donor after losing his life in a car accident. Shortly thereafter, Julie’s daughter became the recipient of an ankle transplant that relieved her from a lifelong debilitating condition.
“It’s ironic,” Julie said. “All of the sudden you’re looking at something from the exact opposite side. The fact that these things are possible on both ends … it really is a miracle.”
Julie Prangl and her children, Christmas 2006. Son Nick died 6 weeks later in a car accident and became an organ and tissue donor. Daughter Lindsey later received an ankle transplant. (Photo courtesy Julie Prangl)
Are these new made up words? If you’re connected to the high communication environment, you know that these are all ways to get and share information with other people. Who would have imagined as little as several years ago that a messaging website called Twitter would have more than 7 million participating members today? It’s been incredible to watch the alternate methods people have found to stay connected with one another.
And on that note, to help AlloSource communicate with its various stakeholders, we bring you our new blog, AllograftPossibilities.org.
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