During the month of April, the organ transplantation community sponsors campaign throughout the country to increase awareness of the critical need for organ donations. I write to you as a member of the board of directors for TRIO: (Transplant Recipients International Inc., Ventura County/West Valley Chapter) and a 50-year resident of Malibu. I’m making a personal appeal to my fellow Malibu citizens and their families/friends to become organ donors.
I’ve had two life-saving organ transplant experiences — a liver transplant at the UCLA Medical Center, on May 14, 1997, and a kidney transplant at the University Medical Center, Tucson, on May 18, 2010.
A donor crisis exists because of the severe shortage of life-giving organ donations. Currently, over 114,000 gravely ill individuals are on the National Waiting List. While that number grows daily, one person on the list (or one that was removed because he/she was too sick to receive a transplant) is dying every hour. Over 2.5 million Americans die annually. Only a total of 14,148 living and deceased persons donated organs nationally in 2011. (UNOS, United Network For Organ Sharing, March 2012.)
While I laid near death during a three-and-a-half week coma at UCLA, a team of doctors evaluated me to determine my fate. Some of them believed I was too sick to survive a transplant, but one doctor, Malibu’s own Dr. Leonard Goldstein, UCLA hepatologist, persuaded the medical committee to accept his opinion “that all this man needs is a liver transplant.” A few days later, UCLA transplant surgeon Dr. Ronald W. Busuttil and his team performed the successful, seven-hour liver transplant surgery.
During the liver transplant procedure, and with the strong anti-rejection medications that are given to the patient, it is quite common for the kidneys to fail. Thirteen years following the liver transplant, I was in Arizona waiting for a kidney transplant. I spent three months on dialysis, managing to stay alive until the call came from the University Medical Center.
Please consider signing a Department of Motor Vehicle donor card or putting that pink dot on your driver’s license. You can also sign up at donatelifecalifornia.org.
Jerry Jackson