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I'm looking through an external hard drive and I found something I wrote about 20 years ago.
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From death comes life: the importance of organ donation
When I die ( and I know this is a question not of if, but of when, base mortal that I am), I want doctors to hook me up to machines to keep my body alive just long enough for them to come in and remove all my useable organs: corneas, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, skin. Anything they can use for other people, I want them to take. What good will it do me, mouldering in some grave, rotting away, returning to the ashes and dust from which I was formed? I have my preference marked on my state I.D., and have told my fiance in detail what I want done with my body after my death.
There are two things that have convinced me that I want to be an organ donor. One is the book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach , which details what happens after death, from the funeral industry to the donation of cadavers to medicine or science. The other is my experience with a woman who had three kidneys, none of which worked.
I used to work at UIC’s west side dorm’s front desk. I checked new residents in and took the keys from departing residents. I handled small problems, and got the appropriate authorities to handle large problems. I answered questions and answered phones. Most of the people I dealt with during the school year were students. However, over the summer we had foreign exchange students and Intensive ESL students (usually from China), and all year round we had people under long term hospital care stay with us. I’m not sure which hospital they were at… Rush or Cook County, probably, but I’m not sure if it was one, both, or neither. If they were undergoing several operations, distantly spaced, they’d stay with us. Or if they were in the hospital for a long period of time, their families would stay with us. It was cheaper and had more amenities than a hotel.
One such guest had total kidney failure. Both of her kidneys were essentially dead, but had not been removed. She had a third, healthy, kidney in her but it was getting acclimated to her body and hadn’t been hooked up yet. She’d joke about it, having three kidneys, none of which worked. I admired and respected that, because she looked like the walking dead. She was a thin, almost frail woman underneath bad edema. She was grey and puffy and her hair was falling out. She didn’t walk, she shuffled along, stoop-shouldered, because lifting her feet was too much effort. In the time she was with us, she broke both of her feet, simply by walking on them. She was also in a very bad mental fog.
In health, she had been a take-charge, adventurous, active woman. A large part of her still was. She’d leave her room to take a walk, and get as far as the lobby before getting exhausted. She’d sit, in pain, silently. And then she’d get up to go back to her room, and couldn’t remember where it was. There were two interior paths leading to the lobby, and an exterior door. Despite the fact that she’d just come through one of them a few minutes ago, had come through it several times, she could not remember which way to go. She did not remember her room number, or what her door looked like. She was intelligent. She remembered us, the people who worked at the desk. She knew her name and made jokes about her condition. But she could not remember what the room she’d been staying in for a week looked like, or how to get there.
Her donated kidney was hooked up before she died, thank God. I was there when she checked out, and she looked completely different. Her thin, matted hair was more lively and vibrant. Her skin was a lovely, healthy, pinky-brown. Though her feet were still in casts, she moved spryly. She looked like she’d been wrapped in the foggy specter of death, and had finally managed to shove him off. She was a completely different person. She was alive. And she knew how to get to and from her room.
This woman was in her thirties or forties. She had teen-aged kids, and she had nieces and nephews. If someone hadn’t donated a kidney, she would have died. Now, barring some hideous accident or complication, she’ll live to see her kids grow up and have kids of their own.
This woman, this down-to-earth woman shuffling through a disease-induced fog with grim good will and black humor, brought the importance of organ donation home to me more than any number of commercials featuring cute young children with wispy blonde hair and big blue eyes sitting up in too-large hospital gowns in gigantic hospital beds.
This was a real person, a real woman. This could be me.
So, when I die, I don’t want to be hooked up to machines giving me a selfish half-life, in desperate hope that some medical miracle will be able to save me somewhere down the road. I want my machine hookup to be brief, just long enough to keep my organs fresh and alive until they can be harvested. We are born from dust, and unto dust we shall return. Nothing is permanent. The dead live in on the hearts and memories of those who loved them…and in the hearts and memories of those who have received their organs. This is the only kind of immortality I know of.
___
From death comes life: the importance of organ donation
When I die ( and I know this is a question not of if, but of when, base mortal that I am), I want doctors to hook me up to machines to keep my body alive just long enough for them to come in and remove all my useable organs: corneas, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, skin. Anything they can use for other people, I want them to take. What good will it do me, mouldering in some grave, rotting away, returning to the ashes and dust from which I was formed? I have my preference marked on my state I.D., and have told my fiance in detail what I want done with my body after my death.
There are two things that have convinced me that I want to be an organ donor. One is the book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach , which details what happens after death, from the funeral industry to the donation of cadavers to medicine or science. The other is my experience with a woman who had three kidneys, none of which worked.
I used to work at UIC’s west side dorm’s front desk. I checked new residents in and took the keys from departing residents. I handled small problems, and got the appropriate authorities to handle large problems. I answered questions and answered phones. Most of the people I dealt with during the school year were students. However, over the summer we had foreign exchange students and Intensive ESL students (usually from China), and all year round we had people under long term hospital care stay with us. I’m not sure which hospital they were at… Rush or Cook County, probably, but I’m not sure if it was one, both, or neither. If they were undergoing several operations, distantly spaced, they’d stay with us. Or if they were in the hospital for a long period of time, their families would stay with us. It was cheaper and had more amenities than a hotel.
One such guest had total kidney failure. Both of her kidneys were essentially dead, but had not been removed. She had a third, healthy, kidney in her but it was getting acclimated to her body and hadn’t been hooked up yet. She’d joke about it, having three kidneys, none of which worked. I admired and respected that, because she looked like the walking dead. She was a thin, almost frail woman underneath bad edema. She was grey and puffy and her hair was falling out. She didn’t walk, she shuffled along, stoop-shouldered, because lifting her feet was too much effort. In the time she was with us, she broke both of her feet, simply by walking on them. She was also in a very bad mental fog.
In health, she had been a take-charge, adventurous, active woman. A large part of her still was. She’d leave her room to take a walk, and get as far as the lobby before getting exhausted. She’d sit, in pain, silently. And then she’d get up to go back to her room, and couldn’t remember where it was. There were two interior paths leading to the lobby, and an exterior door. Despite the fact that she’d just come through one of them a few minutes ago, had come through it several times, she could not remember which way to go. She did not remember her room number, or what her door looked like. She was intelligent. She remembered us, the people who worked at the desk. She knew her name and made jokes about her condition. But she could not remember what the room she’d been staying in for a week looked like, or how to get there.
Her donated kidney was hooked up before she died, thank God. I was there when she checked out, and she looked completely different. Her thin, matted hair was more lively and vibrant. Her skin was a lovely, healthy, pinky-brown. Though her feet were still in casts, she moved spryly. She looked like she’d been wrapped in the foggy specter of death, and had finally managed to shove him off. She was a completely different person. She was alive. And she knew how to get to and from her room.
This woman was in her thirties or forties. She had teen-aged kids, and she had nieces and nephews. If someone hadn’t donated a kidney, she would have died. Now, barring some hideous accident or complication, she’ll live to see her kids grow up and have kids of their own.
This woman, this down-to-earth woman shuffling through a disease-induced fog with grim good will and black humor, brought the importance of organ donation home to me more than any number of commercials featuring cute young children with wispy blonde hair and big blue eyes sitting up in too-large hospital gowns in gigantic hospital beds.
This was a real person, a real woman. This could be me.
So, when I die, I don’t want to be hooked up to machines giving me a selfish half-life, in desperate hope that some medical miracle will be able to save me somewhere down the road. I want my machine hookup to be brief, just long enough to keep my organs fresh and alive until they can be harvested. We are born from dust, and unto dust we shall return. Nothing is permanent. The dead live in on the hearts and memories of those who loved them…and in the hearts and memories of those who have received their organs. This is the only kind of immortality I know of.
