Five Reasons to be an Organ Donor

When I turned 16, I remember proudly checking the box “yes” on my driver’s license to be an organ donor. Little did I know, 9 years later, organ donation awareness would become a passion of mine. You see, I always wanted to help others in the case of my death, but in my mind, those “others” were older, their bodies worn out from years of use and/or disease. The thought that a child, much less a baby, could need a life-saving transplant was completely foreign to me.

June 1, 2005- Enter biliary atresia, and my new-born son as its latest victim. I won’t go into all the details of this terrible disease, but basically it deteriorates a baby’s bile ducts on the outside of the liver, and eventually the ducts inside the liver are rendered useless as well. Landon had a very complicated surgery called a hypoportoenterostomy (AKA the Kasai procedure) at 7 weeks old to correct the ducts on the outside of his liver, and so far he has lived an (almost) normal life. However, over 50% of biliary atresia (BA) patients receive a liver transplant before they turn 2 years old, and most statistics say that 90-100% of all BA patients will have a liver transplant at sometime in their lives.

Wow. That is a lot to swallow as a young mom. But what helped me the most, besides relying on God? Harriet, a mother of an older BA patient coming to our hospital room and showing us pictures of her then-four-year-old daughter, and telling us that life wouldn’t always be that terrible, and we would have good days, months, and even years with him. Since then, Harriet’s entire family has been instrumental in our lives, sharing the ups and downs of biliary atresia, as well as “regular” life.

After Harriet helped us, and we moved to Houston, Ben and I wanted to do the same for others. We were able to visit many other BA patients and their families in the hospital, including Sydney, who is Landon’s age, and Abby, who is 3. I also recently met a new mom, Erin, through our BA Facebook page.

On Saturday, Ben and I had the privilege of having all of these families over to our house for a “Liver family playmate” as we dubbed it. It was so, so sweet and comforting to see all of these families sharing stories, both good and bad, of our battle with liver disease. And it brought to the forefront of my mind the topic of organ donation again.

Thanks to my friend Tara for the great caption for the photo!

See all of these gorgeous kids and their battle scars from their surgery? Sydney (far left) already has received a transplant, and most likely, the other four kids in the picture will need one as well. I would be so honored if, for the sake of these kids and others like them, you would sign up to be an organ donor. If you have any questions about it, (there are SO many myths floating around out there) please feel free to drop me an e-mail. If you live in Texas, click here to sign up. Other states can click here.

Thanks for “listening” to me on a topic that is oh-so-important to me.

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