HOSPITALS HELP ORGAN DONORS AND RECIPIENTS

By Laura Kennedy  | KURL 8 News |Billings, Montana

BILLINGS - The Governor's office reports 225 people in Montana are waiting to receive organ donations. A group at one Billings hospital keeps track of those patients who are eligible to give.

While no Billings hospitals perform transplant surgeries, patients here still benefit from both giving and receiving gifts of life.

A degenerative eye disease in adulthood left Susan Harpster legally blind. "Unable to work or drive or read a book or the newspaper anything like that," Harpster said.

Through tissue donation Susan received two new corneas and a brand new outlook on life. "After receiving the transplants I'm now 20/30 in one eye and 20/40 in the other and I'm wearing no glasses or contacts to correct my vision," Harpster, the double cornea recipient said.

Penny Clifton is an organ donation work group manager at St. Vincent Healthcare. She and other hospital staff keep track of those like Susan, people in need of transplants, and patients at the hospital who qualify as donors.

"The patients stay with us while recipients for their organs are found in Denver, Salt Lake, wherever. And then the transplant teams from those hospitals all fly in," Clifton said.

Clifton spreads the word about organ donation options available for patients and grieving families. The push for education is especially strong during April, it's "Donate Life Month."

"One organ donor can provide a heart, two lungs, two kidneys, a pancreas so right there I have five potential organs and five potential lives saved," Clifton said.

"I checked on my driver's license years and years ago that I would be an organ donor and I never thought that I'd be on the receiving end of that at some point in my life," Harpster said.

In 2010, 19 Montana organ, eye, and tissue donors saved 52 lives. To register to be an organ donor or for more information on "Donate Life Month," visit www.kulr8.com and click on Connections.