All are encouraged to become organ donors
April is National Donate Life Month
BY JENNIFER AMATO
Staff Writer | North South Brunswick Sentinel

NORTH BRUNSWICK — “Don’t think of organ donation as giving up part of yourself to keep a total stranger alive. It’s really a total stranger giving up almost all of themselves to keep part of you alive.”

Though the author of this quote is unknown, it was the message prevalent throughout “Life Goes On: Saving Lives Through Organ and Tissue Donation,” a presentation held at Ross University in North Brunswick on March 15.

Jay Khare, the son of Ross employee Amla Khare, recently underwent a liver transplant operation.

While in high school, Kharewas having some stomach problems in addition to other health problems.

He was sent to a gastroenterologist who diagnosed him with colitis, but further bloodwork showed abnormal liver functions. The doctor noted a bowel duct obstruction that he said medication could help but not cure, and warned Khare of needing a liver transplant at some point in his life.

Fast-forward 12 years later and Khare’s eyes were turning yellow, his hair was falling out and his skin was becoming blotchy and itchy. Eighteen months ago he was told a transplant was a necessity, so he visited several hospitals in the tri-state area seeking an organ. Told the wait list was five to six years, he eventually traveled to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., and received a liver after waiting 30 hours in the hospital.

“I took for granted that there would be an organ forme at one of these hospitals,” he said of his search in New York and Philadelphia. “It was very emotionally draining. … Whoever my donorwas, I owe them my life. I have my life back because of them.”

Khare said that within five days of his surgery he was up, walking around and eating a normal diet, and within three months he was living comfortably back at home.

“It’s a wonderful feeling knowing someone out there was so kind and so generous,” he said. “Being able to get up in the morning and look in the mirror and not see yellow in my eyes and not have to put bottles of lotion on my skin [is a blessing].”

Khare said that if everyone would choose to be a donor, there would be no wait time for recipients, who are in desperate need of transplants. He said that it is “very devastating as a patient” to have to wait for years, if able to receive an organ at all, or to have to travel around while sick.

“Everybody can be a hero to somebody,” he said.

“Every day I wake up and see him,” his motherAlma said. “It still gives me goosebumps [to think of] the day we got the call, ‘We have an organ for you.’ It’s surreal.”

According to Dr. Nancy Perri, the chief academic officer for Ross University and a transplant nephrologist, there are almost 120,000 people on the organ list, with over 93,000 people needing a kidney and over 16,000 people needing a liver.

She said that living organ donations from a stranger are integral; a person can live with one kidney and the liver can regenerate itself. Organ donors go to the top of the organ list should they need their own transplant surgery at any point.

Morgan R. Johnson knows that necessity all too well. The hospital services manager for New Jersey Sharing Network had a kidney transplant four years ago.

Johnson visited her sister in Atlanta, Ga., one weekend and felt “weird” while shopping at a grocery store. Twenty years old, she went over to the blood pressure machine available there and was rushed to the hospital after the reading showed her pressure was 228/160, when a normal reading is around 120/80.

She went into full kidney failure and was put on dialysis.

Six months later, Johnson enrolled at Kean University and befriended a young woman named Kelly. Because she was on peritoneal dialysis for nine hours each night, she couldn’t go out after hours like most college students do. Eventually she had to tell Kelly she had kidney disease, and Kelly offered to donate her kidney although they had only been friends for a month or two.

“If she givesme a kidney and then asks me to borrow my shoes, I have to let her because she gave me her kidney,” Johnson joked.

Johnson refused at first, but upon Kelly’s second request she gave her the contact information for a transplant coordinator.

In November 2006 as they were both leaving campus for the weekend, Kelly received a phone call from Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital saying she was a perfect match for Johnson. On Jan. 9, 2007, they both underwent surgery and have been well since.

“For this perfect stranger to be a perfect match was mind-blowing,” Johnson said. “I don’t care if I never receive another holiday gift in my life. Receiving a kidney was the greatest gift I could ever receive.”

Johnson said that an average of 18 people each day, or about 6,000 people a year, die waiting for an organ.

She also noted that people can donate tissues such as corneas, skin for burn victims, bones for orthopedic needs, heart valves for children with heart diseases, and saphenous veins for coronary bypass surgery.

“One tissue donor really has a major impact on the lives of many people,” she said.

From the donor side, Johnson showed a six-minute video about 21-year-old Jason Ray, the mascot for the University of North Carolina Tar Heels, who was hit by an SUV in Teaneck while supporting his team during a regional basketball tournament inMarch 2007.

The video featured three recipients of Ray’s

— Jay Khare kidneys, pancreas and heart.

“Maybe some child’s daddy was dying and I could save that man,” Ray’s mother said of her son’s decision to designate himself as an organ donor when filling out his driver’s license paperwork.

To become a donor, information can be filled out while renewing a driver’s license, or can be included in an advanced directive or living will. First person is legal consent, but if no donor designation is given, then the next of kin makes the decision once the person is declared dead.

For more information visit the websites www.sharenj.org, www.UNOS.org or www.RossU.edu.