A registered organ donor can help up to 8 people
Caroline Rash | Anderson Independent Mail

Christina-Taylor Green, the 9-year-old girl killed in the recent Tucson, Ariz., shootings, saved the life of a little girl in Boston and the eyesight of two other children because of her parents’ decision to donate their daughter’s organs.

Roxanna and John Green said that knowing their daughter could help improve others’ lives brought some comfort in their time of grief, and they have begun encouraging other families to discuss organ donation before grieving family members face the decision.

Nicole Burdette of Anderson had to make the same tough decision when her husband Alex, a state trooper, was killed while helping a stranded motorist on S.C. 81 South, near where that road intersects with Hayes Road in southern Anderson County, in March 2005. Twelve hours after he arrived at the hospital, he was pronounced brain dead, and Nicole had to decide whether or not to donate his organs. Since Alex had always expressed to her that “if he could help someone, he would,” Burdette knew what she had to do.

“He had stopped to help a woman on his way home from work,” Burdette said. “So I thought being an organ donor could be his last way of helping someone.”

Becoming a donor

Becoming an organ donor is quick and easy, but since South Carolina did not create an official registry until December 2008, some people who believe they are organ donors may not actually be registered.

The pre-2009 heart symbol on 34 percent of South Carolinians’ driver’s licenses indicates a desire to be a organ donor but is not an official registration, so people who wish to be donors still must formally join the registry.

To ensure that you are an organ donor, visit Every11Minutes.org or register during your next trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

But even with the good will of many donors, nearly 1,000 people remain on South Carolina’s organ recipient waiting list, and a new person is added every 11 minutes. Local healthcare agencies race against the clock to find matches for those waiting patients, and AnMed Health Center of Anderson has recently garnered national attention for its success in increasing numbers of organ transplants.

AnMed has worked for years in conjunction with the statewide agency Lifepoint Organ and Tissue Donation to dispel myths about organ donation and inform people of how to properly register as a donor. After attaining an average of 3.75 organs successfully transplanted per donor, AnMed was one of six South Carolina hospitals to receive a Medal of Honor for Organ Donation from the Department of Health and Human Services in November.

Though the average is 3.75 organs placed per donor, each donor can help up to eight people, according to Chuck Horton, AnMed Health Center’s nurse manager of the neurointensive care unit. In fact, a donor might be able to help someone he or she knows.

When Corey Macher of Anderson was put on the organ donation registry for a kidney, he started looking for a match within his family but did not guess that a relative of an acquaintance from church would be able to save him from hours of home dialysis each day. Then the daughter-in-law of his friend died unexpectedly, and the family requested Macher be the recipient. When Macher unexpectedly got the call from the Medical University of South Carolina one morning on the way to class at Clemson University, he left school, packed up his car in a rush and drove straight to Charleston, where he received a life-changing kidney.

“I can’t express how much better a patient can feel,” Macher said. “You can go out and don’t have to sit at home depending on a machine. Before it was so hard trying to go to class and do dialysis.”

After receiving the kidney, Macher graduated in 2009 with a degree in accounting. His family now celebrates the day he got the kidney as a “second birthday,” and he occasionally works with Lifepoint to spread the word about organ donation by sharing his story at health fairs and other local events. Lifepoint and AnMed host other events to raise awareness as well, such as the annual Christmas gathering where family members of donors and recipients can celebrate the gift of life by hanging pictures of their loved ones on a Christmas tree and sharing their experiences.

Sometimes, these events allow family members of donors to see exactly how they helped another person. In 2006, after reading an article in the Independent Mail about Beau Langer receiving a kidney, Nicole Burdette contacted him to see if he might have received her husband’s kidney. Their stories matched, and soon the two met. Both attended the Christmas ceremony that year, and Langer was able to express how much Nicole’s decision meant to him.

“Alex Burdette is my hero,” Langer said.