Green chair promotes organ donations

Written by

Peggy O'Farrell 

Crosby Fugate and Tater Johnson will each take their turn in the big green chair Monday.

Crosby, 18, and Tater, 6, will help LifeCenter, Greater Cincinnati's organ bank, celebrate its first Green Chair Campaign event to raise awareness of the need for organ donors.

The statewide campaign, sponsored by Donate Life Ohio, urges Ohio residents to register as organ, eye and tissue donors and help save lives.

The sight of an empty chair where a loved one used to sit is heartbreaking, campaign organizers say. But in Ohio, 3,350 people are waiting for life-saving organs.

In Greater Cincinnati, more than 500 people are on the waiting list, and 18 people die waiting for a donor organ every day in the United States.

Starting at 8 a.m. Monday, people who've received transplants, donor families, patients awaiting transplants and loved ones of people who died waiting for a donor organ will take turns sitting in the green chair at LifeCenter's Walnut Hills headquarters. The event will end at 7:59 a.m. Tuesday.

Crosby and Tater met last year while awaiting transplant surgery at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.

Tater, who lives in Huber Heights with his mother, Narqueisha Johnson, was born prematurely with an infection that required surgeons to remove a large portion of his small intestine. Complications from the surgery caused his liver to fail.

Tater originally went on the transplant list in December 2007. He almost got a transplant in early 2008, but the organ was too badly damaged, and he went back on the list, Johnson said.

Crosby, who lives in Crittenden, was diagnosed in 2005 with primary sclerosing cholangitis, a disease that causes severe scarring of the liver. He went on the transplant list in December 2009.

Crosby got his new liver on April 9, 2010.

Tater got a new liver, pancreas and small bowel on April 15 last year.

Tater was too shy to talk to a reporter, but Crosby said he's feeling great.

"It's probably the best year I've had since I can remember," he said. "I want to show my support. I know a lot of people who are waiting for transplants."

Crosby was hospitalized for five months while waiting for a new liver. That's where he got to know Tater, who was also waiting for a transplant.

"He was just this little kid, and everybody knew he was really sick, but there were days I couldn't get off the bed and he was running all over the hospital," Crosby said.

Johnson said she hopes Monday's event will inspire families to talk about organ donation. "Just think about somebody in your family who might die waiting for a transplant," she said.