Out of Pod Experience

having been a medic.... I suggest learning the difference between clinical death, brain death, and biological death... and which one is enough justification to harvest your organs. (before you go looking, take a wild guess)

also make sure you understand what a BHC, or Beating Heart Cadaver is. In short, it's a body that has lost brain function, but continues to possess a heartbeat. If you're thorough enough, you'll find the cases of BHCs squirming under their restraints as their organs are harvested.

In my living will, required of all US servicemembers prior to deployment, I specified... do not resuscitate, do not keep on life support, I do not consent to organ donation. every time.

This wikipedia entry for Legal Death is a good place to start reading.

the short of it is:

if they remove your intubation (the thing that forces air into your lungs) and you can't breathe on your own, they replace the intubation, but at that point you're being kept alive for your organs.

yeah.

however ...partial liver transplant? I would take the risk for my parents and siblings. but I am not a general donor

it's true, talk with any medical professionals who work in surgery or trauma wards.

who you know personally, so they'll be more open about the nitty gritty

My family considers me weird for not ticking the organ donor box on my drivers license. I feel that in death I can at least have the sanctity of all my flesh rotting together than as some organs pumping after... I'm an atheist, but when I die I want to be DEAD, and then see what the hell all these religious guys are on about afterwards.

An Engineer myself so I can see the logic of keeping spare parts in good nick, though I honestly thought that organs were harvested from a corpse and either put into storage (frozen) or used immediately. Horrifying to think of myself being brought back to a whisker beneath self awareness and being harvested.... Sorry I feel like I'm going to throw up.

Or this guy. I am a dentist.

Its funny how many times I've been asked that question. During the application and testing process I have been asked by six doctors/surgeons about whether I've thought it all through, and they are quite blunt about it. One surgeon straight out told me he thinks that anonymous donors are crazy. Or as he put it, "You are taking a hell of a risk and your only guarantee is that you will not come out of it better than you were before going in." He also told me that he dislikes doing the living donor surgery because it goes against the doctors credo of doing no harm.

In a nutshell, by the time you are accepted for the procedure you have been giving every last piece of information about the surgery, how it is done, the physical/social/financial risks and you have been given them multiple times. If I my liver anatomy is compatible for donation then a surgery date is booked after which I will have to see a psychiatrist, more surgeons and social workers/counselors before I am allowed to go ahead with the actual surgery. If at any time one for these people does not think I'm making an informed and non-coerced decision the whole thing it put off.

At the end of the day, for me personally, the risks are acceptable. That doesn't mean that they would be acceptable to anyone else, as I am frequently hearing from friends and family, but to me they are.

well i work in surgery...and while i have heard of this, i have never been part of a donor case. my hospital is small and on the very rare occurence that their is a donor a team from lifeline will come in and handle the case themselves.

With respect, I generally consider that if someone has wrecked their body, there isn't much point in helping them prolong the suffering. I also like my parts right where they are. Selfish maybe, but they are mine, and, I can pretty near guarantee there is hardly a soul on this Earth that would help me if I needed it.

Most people who need lung, kidney, liver transplants need them for a reason, and it is not because they just happened to have some spontaneous problem that resulted in their need for one. Drinking, Smoking, bad diet, or general complete lack of concern for ones physical health are the most common causes.

For those few who need it as children, without ever having done anything to create that problem on their own, I feel for them. They deserve all the help and assistance they can get. I do try to reserve judgement, but I still would question whether they were deserving, and if they were good and innocent even then.

Reservations. I've seen too many people in a great variety of age groups that were already corrupted and whom I cannot imagine will bring any good to this world. Even children.

That's harsh, I know. Life has taught me to be very skeptical about people and their worth. There are examples enough, (I won't bring them up), that youth doesn't always indicate innocence. I'm sure you know.

So yeah, I have reservations, but I also know there are those that deserve much more out of life, and health, and more, that they don't have. And for them, I should give anything. You can't give everything though, unless you intend to sacrifice yourself and the situation calls for it.

Besides that, I can't afford the consequences.

New Vlog linked in first post. Its an update about the tests and starting to fund raise. The short of it is that I have passed all the tests with flying colours, and in a week I will be talking to the doctors in a final consultation. Hopefully then I will be able to pick a surgery date.

The doctors prefer doing children's transplants where living donors are concerned. Children require a smaller potion of the liver, and the risk to the donor is lessened to a large degree because of this. The recovery is shorter, and the incision is smaller. I have the choice as to whether to donate to an adult or a child. I cannot specify an individual specifically, but I may make a generalized choice. I'm my case, I prefer the idea of donating to a child, but should the need arise I cannot prioritize one life over another, and I cannot ethically refuse my donation to one person in order to hold out for another. In other words, barring an emergency in which an adult requires a liver, I will donate to a child. But should there be an emergency, I'm fine with it going to an adult.