This week ESPN’s Rick Reilly wrote a poignant story about a handful of athletes who became organ and tissue donors after their deaths, and will on Monday be celebrated with floragraphs on the Donate Life Float in the annual Tournament of Roses Parade.
Reilly says about the tradition of the float: “It’s a lot for a Monday morning. The Donate Life float feels like both a funeral and a christening, like heartache and heartsong.
It will represent the best of us: the pro fighter Paco Rodriguez, who died in a title bout and whose organs live in five others now; the snowboarding champion Dylan Peters, who was inspired to be a donor when he met Olympic snowboarder and liver recipient Chris Klug; and the Air Force Academy head football manager, suicide victim Marc Henning, whose body was harvested for dozens of tissue grafts, including one to his own mother.
It’s a downer and an upper and a breath-taker all in one. It’s 100 feet of flower- and cinnamon- and split-pea-covered emotion. But it’s helping.
There were 65 million registered donors in the U.S. in 2006. Now there are 102 million. That’s still only 42 percent of 18-and-over Americans, but people are starting to get it: Death can mean life.”
Read the full article here.
Be sure to tune into the Rose Parade and watch for the Donate Life Float on Monday, January 2, 2012 at 8:00 a.m. Pacific time.
Susan Cossabone set to show the nation the possibilities of cellular bone transplantation in 2012 Tournament of Roses Parade®
AlloSource, a leading developer, processor and distributor of bone and soft-tissue allografts for use in surgical procedures around the world, will this year sponsor a living symbol of the evolving possibilities of tissue transplantation as a float rider aboard the annual Donate Life float in the Tournament of Roses Parade®. Susan R. Cossabone, an equine instructor from Egg Harbor City, NJ, was no longer able to ride horses following a devastating car accident. But now Cossabone thrives and rides again thanks to a cutting-edge product consisting of bone and adult mesenchymal stem cells from a tissue donor. On January 2nd, Cossabone will join 27 other riders from around the country on the Donate Life float, now in its ninth year, in a tribute to the millions of people touched by organ, tissue and blood donation.
AlloSource CEO Tom Cycyota said ““We are thrilled to once again sponsor a float rider aboard the Donate Life Rose Parade float as a way to increase awareness about tissue donation, which is still lesser understood than organ donation but can have the same life-saving and life-enhancing benefits. Susan is a symbol of the exciting new ways we can do more with life, thanks to the courageous generosity of tissue donors and their families.”
To read more about Susan, click here.
We want to hear from you: do you talk to your family and friends about being an organ and tissue donor? What do you say?
Leave a comment here or join the conversation on our Facebook page.
At 77 years old, Jane Przedpelski describes herself as “happily active.” A Colorado resident, she finds pleasure in camping, snowshoeing and walking in the mountains and the desert with her husband. However, a fall from a ladder and subsequent broken leg threatened her active lifestyle.
The fall resulted in a broken tibia, or shin bone. Doctors recommended that she have surgery to repair the bone, as it was not likely to heal well enough on its own. The surgery involved implanting a steel plate against her bone for structural support. Additionally, after finding osteoporosis in the bone during surgery, the doctor chose to also transplant bone grafts from a deceased human donor into Jane’s injured bone to allow it to strengthen over time.
An unfamiliar concept to Jane, she questioned her doctor about the bone tissue transplant.
“I asked the doctor if compatibility studies had been done,” Jane said. “He explained that contrary to organ transplants, it was not necessary.” (more…)
Newsfeed