Today we are pleased to offer this story as a part of Donate Life America’s “I Am Hope” initiative, in which a new story about donation or transplantation is shared each day of 2012. This story shows how donated tissue can truly change and enhance someone’s life.
It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving when Kathryn Hart’s life took an unexpected turn. Prior to that day, Hart was the epitome of an active individual. She was a runner, a yoga enthusiast, a horseback rider and an artist who painted and sculpted large pieces. Her active lifestyle was threatened however, when on that Sunday in 2004 Hart fell two stories from a ladder, shattering her leg.
“It was completely and totally shattered. The doctor told me he stopped counting after two dozen pieces of bone,” said Hart.
As a market researcher, Hart had worked in the donation industry, even doing research for the tissue bank that provided her allograft bone.
“I knew that I would probably need donor bone, so I asked specifically about it,” said Hart. “In my fever and drug-induced state, I asked the doctor if he planned to use donor bone and if so, whose it was. He responded with, ‘Who are you?’”
Though the main injury was her shattered leg, Hart’s body responded to the inflammation caused by the fall with a fever of over 104 degrees. (more…)
A large part of who Cameron had become was likely over. Competing as a student athlete on the lacrosse field was what he loved most. As team captain, he had every intention of leading his team throughout his senior year. Additionally, he was planning to continue playing the sport he loved in college.
“When I got word from my doctor that my senior year of lacrosse was over, I was devastated,” said Cameron McDonald.
During a game, Cameron injured his ankle. Thinking it was a minor injury, he continued playing. Despite initially thinking it was just a sprain, he woke up the next morning to an ankle swollen to the size of a basketball. (more…)
As a professional opera singer, Charity Tillemann Dick needed a good set of lungs. However, at the age of 20 she developed a dangerous condition and needed an immediate lung transplant. After her first tranplant, her body began rejecting the new lungs, thus putting her on a tulmutuous journey waiting for the second pair. See her amazing story and hear her amazing voice in the video below.
A large part of the United States’ foundation is religious freedom. As a result, there are many and various religions throughout the nation. Nearly all of these religions have addressed the issue of donation. Where do you think your church stands? Check out this comprehensive list of religions and what they say about donation here.
After losing her 17-year-old son to spina bifida, Gail Bowden was determined to keep his memory alive. Because his favorite color was yellow, Gail decided she would hire someone to help paint her walls the happy color that reminded her of her son. When the painter arrived, she soon realized that this was not just about paint, but about healing coming in the form of a painter. Read this touching story and watch the video here.
Recipients of life-saving and life-enhancing organ and tissue donations often find themselves wondering how they can honor the life of their donor. In this article, three recipients share how they choose to honor the gift of life in all they do. Read more here.
The National Kidney Foundation printed these 25 great facts about organ and tissue donation. Take a look and have your donation questions answered here.
As a cheerleading coach and life-long athlete, Barbara Richards was accustomed to falls and strains. Over the years however, those falls and strains caused serious damage to Richards’ knees.
“In the fall of 2009, I began having pain and swelling in my right knee,” said Richards. “By January 2010, I was unable to ski or play tennis.”
Soon the pain in her knee began impacting her everyday activities.
“I found that the long hours standing and working out with my team were becoming increasingly painful,” said Richards.
After going through physical therapy, Richards still found no relief from the constant pain. As a result, she opted for surgery to repair what was thought to be a torn meniscus.
“During the surgery, my doctor discovered a hole in the meniscus,” said Richards. “During a subsequent consultation, he told me that the only cure would be a tissue transplant.” (more…)
U.S. Marshall John Perry was shot and killed in the line of duty while serving his community. After his death, Perry continued to serve his community by saving and enhancing over 100 lives through organ and tissue donation. See the following video to hear about his legacy in life and in death.
Go Michigan! In February alone Michigan had nearly 41,000 residents sign up to be donors. Michigan is already 77 percent ahead of last year at this time, and it’s only March. See how they’ve expanded their outreach efforts here.
After losing her 17-year-old brother in a car accident, Caitlyn Persinger threw herself into sports. Her brother had always encouraged and pushed her to be the best. She was a gifted athlete and, as a freshman, made the varsity soccer team. Four years after her brother’s death, Caitlyn continued to be active in sports. While playing soccer her senior year of high school, Caitlyn twisted her knee and heard something snap. A trip to the hospital later, Caitlyn was told she had torn her ACL and would likely need a donor tendon to repair the damage. Immediately, Caitlyn’s parents’ thoughts turned to their son who had chosen to be an organ and tissue donor prior to his death. Read the rest of this incredible story here.
After losing his step father in a tragic fall, Brandon Witt and his mom made the split-second decision to donate his tissue. That decision, made in the midst of tragedy, led to a life-long friendship between Brandon and the young ballplayer who received his step father’s tissue. Hear their stories and watch their first in-person meeting in the video below.
Fascinating news published this week by CNN. Full story here.
Says the article: “If you are on dialysis like approximately 400,000 other Americans, then your life could change for the better in the next couple of years thanks to some new biomedical engineering.
“The technology, announced this week at an American Heart Association conference on emerging technology, enables engineers to grow sheets of human cells in a laboratory, and then synthesize them into tubes, mimicking human blood vessels. Alternatively, the human cells, which come from skin cells, can be made into threads and then woven into the form of blood vessels.”
April is National Donate Life Month and features an entire month of local, regional and national activities to help encourage Americans to become organ, eye and tissue donors. As it comes to a close this year, I am pleased to say that it’s been a great month!
Organ Procurement Organizations and hospitals around the country held events to promote donor registration and honor donor families. Media coverage has been overwhelming, including fantastic stories on Oprah and ESPN (the latter you can check out right here on our website.)
At AlloSource, we spent the month focusing on sharing the stories of donor families and tissue recipients. It is through personal anecdotes like these that the gift of tissue donation and the possibilities of tissue transplantation can be better understood. We continue to make this important education an ongoing mission.
Scroll down for numerous posts about the media coverage and donation activities from Donate Life Month. We hope April has inspired and invigorated you as much as it did us.
It was the holidays in 2005 and Sarah Tomicich was a young professional excited about her new job in the finance department of a large Denver company. Fun-loving and outgoing, Sarah was happy to offer up her talents for the playful “Stupid Human Tricks” competition at the company’s annual year-end party.
Sarah’s trick was a squirm-inducing move she’d been doing since she was a little girl: rising up on her tip toes, she would rotate her feet until her toes were pointing straight behind her body, with her legs still together. But the trick didn’t go smoothly this time.
“My ankle popped; I thought I broke it,” Sarah said. “The pain was so bad. It was horrible.”
During an initial trip to the doctor, Sarah’s injury was misdiagnosed as a sprain. She went home hoping it would heal on its own. For the next several years Sarah tried to deal with the pain, but her ankle was never the same. The injury began to take a serious toll on her active lifestyle: she could no longer do the things she loved, including skiing and running. She would push herself to play team sports like kickball, but be miserable from the pain for days afterwards. (more…)
We are honored to share this video blog from donor parents Pat and Jay Landers of Springfield, IL. Here Pat and Jay remember their son, Ryan, who was killed in a car accident and became an organ and tissue donor. So far, Ryan’s gifts have impacted 61 recipients in at least 12 states and Korea through 2 organ, 54 tissue and 5 vascular transplants.
Pat and Jay share in their own words what it has meant to them to be a donor family.
We were so pleased to meet this brave donor family via the Gift of Hope organ procurement organization.
Every March 4, family and friends of donor Jake Thompson gather for a day of snowboarding in honor of Thompson, who was an avid snowboarder and was killed in an accident on March 4, 2009. Today is the second annual Shred for Jake Day and is being held at Keystone Ski Resort from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.
We are pleased to announce that we have launched an AllograftPossibilities Facebook page. Click here to check it out. Our goals for the page are threefold: grow the online awareness of tissue donation, provide updates on tissue donation and transplantation in social communities where people are spending time and introduce new people to the educational AllograftPossibilities site.
Those of you who are on Facebook, we would appreciate your support in “liking” the page. Please invite your friends and family to do the same. For those of you without Facebook accounts, don’t worry, you can still view our Facebook at any time, as it is a public page.
Tending to her garden, church activities and spending time with her husband of 28 years, two daughters and six energetic grandchildren are some of the most important parts of Debby Spidel’s life. However, several years ago a worsening spinal condition threatened to overshadow her time doing these things that are most dear.
Debby, a 50-year-old senior human resources generalist from Lebanon, IN, had for several of years suffered from a degenerative arthritic condition in her spine that resulted in constant neck pain. While she saw a chiropractor weekly and the therapy would provide momentary relief, nothing fully eradicated the problem.
As her condition progressed her back pain began taking a greater toll on her body. “I was having numbness in my arms and hands. I had headaches all the time,” said Debby.
Her doctor referred her to an orthopedic surgeon, who gave Debby some serious news: it wasn’t a matter of if she was going to need spinal surgery, but when. Two of Debby’s discs were protruding and pushing on her spinal cord. The surgeon warned her that waiting much longer to have surgery would lead to permanent nerve damage. (more…)
As you may know, every year we sponsor a float rider on the Donate Life Float in the Tournament of Roses Parade. The float features organ and tissue transplant recipients, living donors and family members of deceased donors from around the country, joined together in celebration and remembrance of the spectacular gift of life. It is a great opportunity for us to continue telling the story of tissue donation and transplantation.
This year our float rider was 20-year-old cancer survivor and bone recipient Parker Simpson, originally from Aurora, CO. Parker went to school with my sons and I know his story of courage and perseverance on a personal level. He had an inspiring experience while in Pasadena for the parade. (more…)
Please take a moment to read this powerful story from USA Today, which focuses on the difficult decision for parents who have lost a child to donate their deceased child’s organs and tissues, and how this choice offers them comfort following the grave loss.
From the article: Donating their child’s organs not only gives parents “some sense of closure, it also allows them to know that their child is living on in a special way,” says George Mazariegos, a pediatric liver and intestine transplant surgeon at Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh. “That’s very healing and very powerful for them.”
We were thrilled that myriad local media took an interest in the story of Colorado Rose Parade float rider and tissue recipient Parker Simpson. It was a great way to kick off the New Year: with a reminder of the amazing possibilities of tissue donation.
Follow the links below to check out some of the coverage of this AlloSource-sponsored float rider:
Additionally, another Rocky Mountain participant, Patricia Thomas (sponsored by Donor Alliance) also received great media coverage of her participation. Patricia rode aboard the Donate Life float in memory of her daughter Kathleen, who was a tissue donor.
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