Many reasons to donate organs

by Letters Editor · July 8, 2010

From Dickon Daggit, Cape Town:

I� would like to compliment� and thank you for your editorial on organ transplants (June 16). I received a new kidney on New Year�s Eve, and it is really as if my life has started anew.

I had been waiting for a transplant for three years and was on dialysis for two. The depression of dialysis is indescribable: I was one of the lucky ones to have to be dialysed only twice a week. I had to leave for the unit at 15:45 to be put onto the machine anywhere between 16:30 and 17:00.

The dialysis itself lasted four hours with 30 minutes at each end for getting you on, and waiting for the bleeding to stop when getting off. It was six hours door to door, feeling awful afterwards, up to half of the next day. Then a good day, and then back to the unrelenting grind.

As I have no relatives and a rare blood type there was no possibility of a live donor. Although some friends offered, they were turned down for one reason or another. The kidney eventually came from a 16-year-old male who had been killed in circumstances unknown to me.

Although the euphoria of the kidney kicking in immediately was indescribable, psychologically it was difficult coming to terms with the idea that someone had died, and by so doing had let me live.

The view expressed by a good many of my visitors was: �Well, there�s no point in me becoming an organ donor, as nobody would want my parts.� That made me angry: everyone is entitled to say they don�t want to donate, but to say that your organs are useless to another is a cop out.

How can anyone say that their 50-year-old corneas are not needed by a 60-year-old with failing eyesight, or that their 40-year-old kidneys cannot save the life of another 40-year-old? Leave it to the experts: the transplant organisations are way better qualified to determine whether organs are of use.

Unless you have an ethical reason for not becoming an organ donor, please contact the Organ Donor Foundation � you could save a life or even more.