DONATE LIFE ORGAN DONATION AWARENESS - UNITED STATES

Larry's Kidney : The Unfunny Part of My Quest For a Kidney
Daniel Asa Rose The Huffington Post

My book , Larry's Kidney, has been getting a lot of laughs. The subtitle tells you why: Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China With my Black Sheep Cousin and his Mail-Order Bride, Skirting the Law to Get Him a Transplant ... and Save His Life.

But there's a more serious issue beneath the laughter that I try to bring out at readings and signings. An issue that's way bigger than what a lovable pain in the ass Larry is, way bigger than whether China is the best place to go for an illegal kidney ...

And that's the need for people to donate organs.

Wait! -- Don't go away. This is urgent. Do you realize that FEWER people are donating organs this year than in previous years? Apparently this is the first time this has happened since they started tracking donor statistics two decades ago.

At the same time, MORE people are in dire need of organs. The number of people languishing on the waiting list is growing by leaps and bounds - some 50,000 more people will join the list in 2011.

17 Americans die each day, waiting for organs that never materialize in time.That's 17 mothers, daughters, sons, fathers, brothers, sisters ... 17 neighbors and cousins and teachers and mailmen and grocery store cashiers.

17 a day. People who are alive every bit as much as you and I are alive.

THAT'S why Larry was forced to go to China with me to hunt down a kidney. His American doctors told him he'd have to wait SEVEN TO TEN YEARS for a kidney (after two years already on dialysis).

As for countless other patients, this was tantamount a death sentence. If you've ever seen anyone who's undergone dialysis, the process leaves you with no life. You are hooked up to a machine for four hours three times a week, and you're so drained afterwards that each treatment is typically followed by twelve hours of addled sleep.

As Larry told me in no uncertain terms, he was not going to settle for being "an invalid in a chair." He would have killed himself if he'd had to keep waiting, with no guarantee that after seven to ten years he'd get a kidney anyway.

The brutal fact is that as long as Americans can't get the organs they need right here in America, they will be forced to go to the ends of the earth to find them. Breaking laws, stretching moral constraints. They're forced to, because the organs they need cannot be had at home.

Fortunately, an extremely simple solution is at hand. So simple that most of us put it off, relegating it to some future date when we think we'll have more time to attend to it. That's to sign up to be an organ donor.

A procedure that'll take you about a minute and a half. All you have to do is click on a website called www.donatelife.net. From there, you'll be directed to a site in whatever state you live in, and the rest is a cinch.

Bear with me a minute more. Here are a few assurances that need to be more widely spread:

Assurance 1: When a patient is identified as a donor, the hospital staff will work JUST AS HARD to save his or her life. The organs will be used only as the very last resort, when the life is already lost.

Assurance 2: Organ donation does not go against religious beliefs. Quite the contrary: every major religion stresses selflessness.

Assurance 3: You're never too old to be an organ donor.

Assurance 4: You can still have an open casket funeral. "Donation takes place under the same strict, sterile conditions as any surgical procedure," say doctors. "A donor is treated with extreme care and respect, and the body is not disfigured in any manner whatsoever."

Assurance 5: Your family will not be charged for your donation. Once the donor is declared brain dead, the insurance provider of the recipient takes over ALL the costs.

OK? Sorry to interrupt the laughs generated by "Larry's Kidney," but I think it's important to provide context for what made our (mis)adventures necessary in the first place. By all means go back to the hilarious poignant particulars of Larry and the book I wrote about him. But don't forget to donate. All it takes is a click at www.donatelife.net