As of today, there are 98,619 people waiting on the national transplant waiting list for an organ donation due to end stage organ disease...
There are 16,390 people waiting nationally on a liver...
In Alabama (as of 03/21/2008), at UAB where Nathan had his liver transplant, there are 3,158 people waiting on an organ donation...
At UAB there are 88 people waiting on a liver...
January - December 2007 there were 28,353 transplants nationally...
In the year 2007 there were 14,394 organ donors who gave the gift of life to others...
Each day approximately 77 people receive organ transplants...
Each day 19 people die waiting for a transplant...
The above information was obtained from the following sites: http://www.optn.org/data/
http://organdonor.gov/
I wanted to share a couple of pictures with you. The first is a picture of Nathan before his transplant and the second one is a recent photo after transplant (he is about to blow out a candle on his birthday cake).
Can you see the difference? I know it is hard to tell from a picture, but there is an amazing difference in Nathan. Like many of you, I never gave much thought to organ donation before we were faced with the possibility in our own family. It is not that I was against it in any way. I have always thought that organ donation was a great thinng, I just didn't think about becoming an organ donor myself. Nathan is the picture of organ donation.
Would you consider becoming an organ donor today? If you would like to register to become an organ donor, you can go to http://organdonor.gov/donor/index.htm and click on your state to register. We will forever be grateful to Nathan's donor and donor family. In the midst of their grief, the family of a 16 year old young man chose to give the gift of life. There are not words to convey our gratitude. The only thing that I know to do, is to try to show others how this gift has changed Nathan's life and our life as a family. That is what we will do.
2 comments:
Glad to see you getting the word out Lora and Stephan. I'm also glad to see that Nathan is doing so incredibly well post transplant. What a wonderful blessing.
Would you mind if I link to your blog on mine?
Jen, mom of Grace & Meghan, ZZ Alphas
http://alphagirls.blogspot.com
Thanks for leaving your comment on my blog.
I know exactly what you are talking about with the difference in the before and after pictures. We saw the same thing with our son. Looking back at before pictures he seemed to just be being a good sport about life in general, but not really feeling good enough to enjoy it. But after? There is a sparkle in his eyes like never before. :)
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