Organ Donation

garde · #1 (**permalink**) 14-06-10, 01:27 PM

Just been reading this article - BBC News - Wigan transplant patient given lungs of 30-year smoker

Very interesting and think it could be a good one to discuss on here.

A what cost do you prolong someones life & would you be happy to accept an organ "at all cost" to get more time with your loved one?

Personally i think the comments are a bit off - the patients life was extended and she was at deaths door prior to the transplant. Ok it only bought her a few months but surely thats better than nothing?

Your views ? .....

Norwichbereavementmedium · #2 (**permalink**) 13-11-10, 01:58 PM

it's interesting that you say the purpose of extending someone's life is to enable them to spend more time with their loved ones.

If that's the purpose of life why do we all waste so much time not spending quality time with the people we care about?

What's the happiest day of your life to date? An expensive holiday, a posh restaurant meal or a walk along the beach or kicking a football around a park?

indizine · #3 (**permalink**) 13-11-10, 03:48 PM

I find it difficult they didnt know there was such a thing as marginal organs and didnt think to ask.

Also, if you're a person waiting for a lung transplant you would think they would be knowledge about what was involved and would be asking all sorts of questions to which you would get answers. They dont claim they were lied to, just that they weren't informed. So why ask the question now?

If she was adamant she never wanted a smokers lungs then she would have made that clear at the assessment and they would have said "well, you may get them, you may not" thus she takes a chance, or she doesn't.

There are people who dont get the chance she got and its easy to lay blame after death.

Is the dad seriously telling us she'd have preferred to die?

So having a smokers lungs was worse than spending more time with loved ones, or simply being alive longer?

So the parents dont look back and consider how grateful they were for that extra time with their daughter? Do they wish she had said "no thanks" and let her die for that reason? Hmm, sorry no, I do not buy it.

Is everyone she knows and likes, a non-smoker? They'd have to be if she was so repelled she would put her own principal before her own life.

And the worse thing? Someone's child died to give up that lung, and they chose to donate it, and look where it ended up? Shame on them, I say. Someone else could have had it whose parents deserved to see their kid live longer.

Another excuse for a claim.

VirtuallyMary · #4 (**permalink**) 15-11-10, 10:57 AM

I think it's a bit tricky because any parent who's just watched their child die is going to be angry, upset, and looking for someone to blame. I don't think it being an adult child makes it any easier. People expect to go before their children.

So while I see the point indizine is making, and I kind of agree with it, I don't think I could start shouting "shame on them" about bereaved parents handling their grief badly. Especially on the BBC site itself where the parents are likely to read it. I think one-to-one counselling and/or the support of family and friends generally helps bereaved people more than being publicly berated and denounced by total strangers on the permanent searchable archive that is the internet.

That said, Mr Scott does have a point about being *informed*. Major surgery is traumatic, time-consuming, invasive, upsetting, and extremely risky. I suspect there are people out there who would be happy to take on all of that for any transplant organ, no matter what condition it was in - the time off work, the expense of attending to an in-patient family member, the hours of waiting anxiously and knowing there's a 50% plus chance of a doctor coming in to tell you your daughter died on the operating table. But I suspect there are also people out there who, if they were told that a potential donor organ was "marginal", would feel that it wasn't worth the huge risk of surgery and that they would prefer to just live out whatever time they have left at home/in a hospice.

garde · #5 (**permalink**) 15-11-10, 11:19 AM

If someone had said to me we can save rour Dad but its only going to give him 6 months, i would have taken it & im sure he would have too.

Death is always an emotive subject especially when their are children involved - i just think it was unfair for some of those comments to be aired - ok we all snap when someone close dies but my original point stands - do we accept organs at all cost to "buy" extra time - where my kids are concerned my answer would be yes, as long as they had a quality of life better than before the op & gave them time to recover & then spend some quality time with the family

indizine · #6 (**permalink**) 15-11-10, 02:09 PM

I stand by my 'shame on them' because people die through lack of donors.

It's hard enough getting them as it is, so if one person comes along who's kid did manage to get a donated organ (which is more than the other 30% who die without one) isn't the fact that they want to pick and choose, and their ungratefeulness, going to put off future donors because they think that the hard decison they have to make of a surgeon cutting out their kids organs and burying them incomplete (a couple of common donation fears) only to find someone didn't appreciate them and wished they'd never been given them?

This sort of PR does organ donation no good whatsoever and a few poeple may now think twice after reading that story and becasue of that, if only 1 life is lost as a result of a change of mind to donate, then yes, definitely Shame on Them.

Also, they didnt die because of the lungs they got. Not at all. In fact most smokers will live well past 60 years old so she wasnt risking a shorter lifespan at all. Many smokers also die of other things before a smoking-related illness.

I see the point about arguing they should be informed. Had it been left at that, fair enough. But to then start saying she would have rather died, and starting claims proceedings well, I think that's taking the mickey out of the NHS and organ donation. Someone else could have had those lungs and been very grateful today.

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