YOU HAVE THE POWER TO SAVE LIVES. PLEDGE AND REGISTER TODAY

Follow us to learn more about organ donation and our national efforts to raise awareness about the critical need for donated organs. We are finding inspiration in unexpected places.

BECAUSE ORGAN & TISSUE DONATION MATTERS

There are over 113,000 Americans waiting for a life-saving transplant. Registering takes only a few minutes. Please encourage your family, friends and colleagues to pledge the "gift of life" by signing up at your State's donor registry. Click HERE to learn how. Californians, please visit Donate Life California.

Our Pledge Life Memorial, "Celebrate Life...Remembrance". We are pledging to HONOR, remember and celebrate the lives of donors, transplant recipients, donation and transplant community members. Will you PLEDGE with us to do the same?
DL Life Logo April 27,2012 - - - - 113,953 AMERICANS ARE CANDIDATES ON THE UNOS TRANSPLANT WAIT LIST DL Life Logo 91,996 waiting for a kidney DL Life Logo 16,098 waiting for a liver DL Life Logo 1,269 waiting for a pancreasDL Life Logo 2,153 waiting for a Kidney-PancreasDL Life Logo 3,172 waiting for a heartDL Life Logo 1,632 waiting for a lungDL Life Logo 52 waiting for a heart-lungDL Life Logo 278 waiting for small bowelDL Life Logo One organ donor has the opportunity to save up to 8 lives DL Life Logo One tissue donor has the opportunity to save and -or enhance the lives of 50 or more individuals DL Life Logo You have the power to SAVE Lives by becoming an organ, eye and tissue donor, so what are you waiting for? To learn how to register click HEREDL Life Logo

Monday, February 6, 2012

A local man's comeback story

WRCB TV NBC 3, Chattanooga, TN | Nick Austin

CHATTANOOGA (WRCB) -- A Chattanooga man is thankful to be alive for another Super Bowl Sunday after undergoing a heart transplant a few years ago. It all started in November of 2004 when now 57 year old Melvin Gillilan, after feeling perfectly healthy all his life, suddenly experienced excruciating chest pains while at work.

"The paramedics got me to the hospital and they told the ER doctor 'He's not having a heart attack'," recalls Gillilan.

It turned out to be congestive heart failure, a hereditary condition requiring a double bypass to correct. But a month later the chest pains returned and Gillilan went back under the knife, this time for a quadruple bypass. In the end it didn't do the trick, either. His wife of eleven years, Mary, didn't know what to do. She was worried she would lose her soul mate.

"I didn't want to be alone. I had found a great guy. We had such a good, close relationship," says Mary.

Gillilan's chances for a long life were diminishing, but there was some good news on the horizon--one more chance to prolong a life which may get cut short. Doctors placed Gillilan on a list for a heart transplant. He kept his cell phone by his side at all times, waiting two and half years for the call that could save his life.

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