The rewards of organ donations

The News Observer | Carol Offen

The best Mother’s Day gift I ever received was actually one I gave to my son: a kidney. I didn’t need it and he did.

Six years ago, after months of donor testing, this self-confessed wimp (I faint when I have blood drawn) got the green light to be his donor.

How did I do it? Mother’s Day seems like an apt occasion to explain that it was much easier than I’d feared – surely easier than childbirth – that just about anyone can do it, and that it was the most ennobling thing I’ve ever done.

Paul had just graduated from college when his kidneys began failing. For nearly two years, he had dialysis three days a week, dominating his life and sapping his spirit. He needed a transplant, and I was our family’s only donor match. Though he was on the transplant list, waiting for a deceased donor could take several years.

I would do it.

Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/05/12/2058522/the-rewards-of-organ-donations.html

{Register to be an organ,eye and tissue donor. To learn how, www.donatelife.net or www.organdonor.gov}