Organ donation

that thought also crosses my mind as well as the thought of how wonderful it would be to save somebodys life and have a part of our body living again in the recipient body.

 

I took the route of having children to ensure that

 

The thing is, as it stands at the moment, even if you do carry a Donor Card, your relatives still have to give their permission before your organs can be harvested so, no matter how passionately you may want to be a donor and (potentially) help up 50 people, it's all pointless unless your relative also agrees - in most instances a relative is likely to say 'Well, if he/she was carrying a card, then I guess it's what they wanted, so yes' - but if they have reservations or objections and refuse then sadly, your card means diddly-squat.

If you have no living relatives, then you can nominate a person to whom you have made your wishes known (and whose details you have included on the reverse of your card), a friend, minister of religion, GP, neighbour, work colleague, in fact anyone.

The fact is, only a very small number of people die in circumstances where their organs can be used and, (even assuming they do), an even smaller proportion of those will have organs which match a recipient sufficently well to consider transplantation.

Even with medical advancement, the best place to start looking for the ideal donor/recipient match is always going to be the nearest relative - which is why, with 3 daughters, both Mr. F'smum and I are on the Register .... as are they.

 

It was widely publicised in Wales when first mooted, and made clear you need to opt out.
I am in favour of organ donation. Knowing people who have received heart and kidney transplants personally. The kidney transplant was a 2 year old.
I have made it very clear to my relatives, when I die I do not care what happens to my remains, they can take any of my organs etc, and the cheapest funeral and disposal of ashes available. Scatter my ashes on a garden was my suggestion.

 

My Father always told my Mother that when she died, he was going to bury her in his veggie garden since, according to his gardening books, clay soil could be improved by the addition of bulky organic matter! Unfortunately, he died first and Mum was no gardener

 

SO romantic!!!!!

Val

 

I'm an organ donor. Don't really care if someone takes bits from my body after I'm gone I'm not going to need them wherever I go.

 

Something has occured to me in all this.
At one point the NHS was sending organs abroad if a better match was available.
I'm not sure if money was actually changing hands, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Now if this idea was brought in, the UK could possibly become the worlds major supplier in spare parts earning large amounts of money for the cash strapped NHS.

Another thought, these days with things like hand and face transplants going on, I'm not sure there would be much left to bury/cremate.

Although I do really sympathise with those on the waiting list, I'm probably looking very deep, but it all sounds a bit spooky to me.