I fully support organ donation, my wife and I both have it on our driver's license and when my son was in a motorcycle accident we donated any viable organs.
Some of the realities of the process to be prepared for.
The organ donation people are very careful to not be vultures. So, they will not or cannot start any of their processes until the official pronouncement has been made. The blood tests are very extensive, taking over 12 hours to process. But they can't even draw blood and start that until the pronouncement has been made. Seems very inefficient, but that is the way they do it.
It can take several days to get everything coordinated after they start their processes. So your loved one has passed, but they are still kept alive while the donation machinery is kept in motion. One of the donor people we talked to said, that was the biggest reason people did not do the process. The heartache of waiting after the loved one has been declared is just too much to bear.
Our experience was very positive and I wouldn't hesitate to do it again. They people we were in contact with were very caring and understanding. We were given the opportunity to put together a bio of our son's life. That bio was read in his room before they took him away, and again in the operating room before the organ harvesting. We were told it was so everyone was reminded that this was a person.
We were in an unusual situation. We requested that they either harvested the organs on Sunday, or wait until Tuesday. My son had a son and his birthday was on Monday. We did not want my son to be declared on that day (but we would have let it happen if that was our only choice). They jumped through hoops to make Sunday happen.
Sorry for the long post, but later this year is the tenth anniversary of these events, and some parts are like it happened yesterday. Ironic that my son served two tours in Iraq as a blackhawk crew chief/ door gunner, and California traffic did him in.
Doug in SW IA
