What Do You Think About Donating Your Organs After Death?

[Envy]

Lost it at "grenade-eating contest"

 

[Kittendumpling]

I don't believe that the body is necessarily important in itself, so after one's death, the organs might as well be used to help others, it seems like a good thing to do. I can't help but think of the Egyptians' belief about needing the body intact though.

 

[Pickle Juice]

That is just terrible ! Is it legal to cut up someone before they die ?

So sorry to hear this Pickle Juice That's disgraceful and I don't know how they can get away with **** like that.


I'm on the organ doner register, I'm not religious or bothered what happens to my body after I have passed and would be happy for someone to have them to save their life or return lost vision etc. However, I'm really concerned about it now after hearing the above, thats so aweful.

Thank you both.

Apparently it is legal. They didn't hesitate to propose this to my aunt or keep anything a secret, but then maybe they were confident that if she couldn't pay their bill she wouldn't be able to hire a lawyer or find another doctor who would be able to prove that my uncle could have survived his stroke had he received the treatment they were about to give him til they found he had no insurance.

 

[jeneticallymodified]

That is just terrible ! Is it legal to cut up someone before they die ?

yes it is, it's called surgery.

it is much preferable that you are somewhat alive when doctors remove your functional organs and use them for donation. once they're deprived of oxygenated blood supply, they start to go bad- like all other meat does. once they stop working, the clock is ticking over whether or not they'll start to work again properly (if at all) when given a 'boost' inside another persons body. if they've already stopped working or started to decay for a period- like if you stopped breathing for a time and were given CPR by ambulance technicians- there is probably even more concern about keeping your organs in good condition.

legally you have to be deemed 'dead' for doctors to take your organs, if it'd otherwise kill you for them to do so (if they take your heart and don't put you on bypass, they'd get sued if you woke up later). transplant teams consider things like brain death- coma with no signs suggesting anything beyond automatic function, persistent vegetative state, etc.

they'll declare you dead (cos really you are, you're not thinking and feeling in there, you're just a big chunk of person-shaped meat on a bunch of machines that keep everything pumping, force oxygen into your lungs and drip nutrients into your blood to keep everything fresh) and then everybody can say their goodbyes to your body, then they'll wheel you off to surgery, keep you wired up while they take the precious parts out carefully, put them on ice, and rush them off to people in desperate need. then when your heart and lungs and liver and all the other bits that you can't use any longer, but have kindly offered to help other people to live with, are zooming their way across the country to help children, parents, friends, loved-ones, etc, and your body is just an empty shell left behind, they'll turn the machines off, close up, and release your body for burial, cremation, or whatever else you willed (they can use mine for medical study).

there is a very short window during which an organ can be transplanted, after it's been removed from service in it's original owner- people who are waiting for organ donations have to carry a pager, and when (or more likely IF) it goes off, they haul arse to the hospital and hope like hell that nobody in the donors family changes their mind. they don't want other people to be hurt, they really do understand how precious life is (because usually they've struggled to avoid losing their own lives, for a long time) they just desperately need that chance to carry on- and it makes sense to use it if the donor really has no chance of survival- or at least survival that is meaningful (personally i don't want to be hooked up to a machine, in a coma, for years).

once they open somebody up and start to put a donated heart into them, it really does need to work... otherwise they're kind of doubly screwed- they can't just stick the old one back in- they need to remove the damaged organ from the soon-to-be recipient leaving as much as they can intact around it, so they have nice long arteries left behind to reattach the donor arteries to- so they'll kind of 'prune' it really close. i had a friend in my teens who had 3 kidney transplants (his kidneys failed when he was a baby) he was told that he'd only get 3 kidney transplants total... after that there isn't enough left to graft a donor kidney onto.... and to get 10 or 15 years from a donated organ is a huge achievement (you have to consider rejection issues, keeping yourself really healthy, etc).

i've known people who've died while waiting to receive an organ donation. it's really very tragic. imagine knowing that you're relying on somebody else's death, to continue to have a chance at life. how sad. even worse is knowing that people die every day, and that they, and their families will say "no!" to giving you a chance, because they're devastated by the loss, or icked out, or otherwise attached to the idea of their sadly mortally ill family-member's 'meat' having some special value to them... and that instead of giving you that chance to spend more time with your children, to keep on living, etc... they'll pickle those parts and bury them in a box somewhere, or set fire to them and put the charred remains into a jar on the mantelpiece.

 

[led.boots]

Thank you both.

Apparently it is legal. They didn't hesitate to propose this to my aunt or keep anything a secret, but then maybe they were confident that if she couldn't pay their bill she wouldn't be able to hire a lawyer or find another doctor who would be able to prove that my uncle could have survived his stroke had he received the treatment they were about to give him til they found he had no insurance.

If your aunt wants to get his hospital records, I will read them for you if you and she want. I occasionally assist lawyers by helping them figure out what the medicalese in hospital charts is trying to cover up, if anything. (I'm an RN). And you I won't charge, unlike the lawyers, who don't blink an eye when I quote an outrageous fee.

 

[Muggle]

They have have whatever they want apart from my eyes. No way can they have my eyes.

I have donated blood once. They keep sending me letters and emails asking me to donate again but they only come within walking distance of my house 1 a year (and there's no way am I going to donate and then drive home from the other places) and they're talking about coming even less regularly. But I won't be allowed to donate for a couple of years (or something) anyway as I'm having a tattoo in a fortnight.

 

[Pickle Juice]

If your aunt wants to get his hospital records, I will read them for you if you and she want. I occasionally assist lawyers by helping them figure out what the medicalese in hospital charts is trying to cover up, if anything. (I'm an RN). And you I won't charge, unlike the lawyers, who don't blink an eye when I quote an outrageous fee.

Thank you. It was a long time ago though, and I think my aunt has made her peace with it.