Hagan, who works as director of quality improvement for Gift of Life Michigan, received a liver transplant after he contracted hepatitis from a patient when he was an emergency room physician. The liver helps clean toxins from the blood and makes chemicals used in blood clotting and digestion.
“They told me I probably had less than 18 months to live,” he said. “After the surgery the doctors told me I probably would have had less than a week left to live if I hadn't had the transplant.”
Now, more than 10 years later, he works with Gift of Life to improve the process of recruiting organ donors and recovering organs. Most people support organ donation in general, he said, but are worried about things like whether they can have an open-casket funeral or whether their religious community will approve.
Neither is typically a problem, he said: donors are sewn back up after their organs are removed, and all major religions approve of organ donation, though Jehovah's Witnesses require that an organ be drained of blood before they accept it.
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